Josh Kushner
speaker
255 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Josh Kushner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, I think as a firm, we've always taken a very different approach with regards to how we present ourselves to the world. And I think that has come from a couple of different frameworks. The first is, and most important, our belief that the founders are heroes and the idea of taking credit for their success is not something that we've ever wanted to do.
I think personally, the construct of seeking validation from others is not something that we've ever believed would lead to us getting to the right conclusions on things that we do. We've always been different in that we don't apply to the Midas list or things like that, just because even internally, forget about how we would want to be perceived externally.
Every single win that we have is the entire firm's win. And every single loss that we have is the entire firm's loss. I know you've had Shane Battier on the show before, and we all quote the no stat all-star often. Such an incredible piece. Yeah. There's a great story that we remind the entire organization about often, which is I led investment in Slack. I sourced the deal. I underwrote the deal.
I joined the board. I was the person who ultimately decided when we should exit the company. But as we were talking about it as a team, I was extremely nervous about the price that we were about to pay. And my partner, Kareem, who was not involved in the underwriting process, who had never met Stuart, who did not join the board, was the one who actually convinced me that we should do the deal.
So who gets credit? Is it me? Is it him? No, it's the team. I think if you have that mindset, the idea of being out there in the ways in which others are in our industry is something that we've always gravitated away from. Why do this? I think in many respects, there are negative aspects of the fact that we're not out there and that some people don't really know what we do.
Some people think that we just incubate companies. Some people think that we just make early stage investments. Some people think that we only make later stage investments. A mentor of mine said to me recently, if you don't tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.
I feel grateful to have the opportunity to do it with you, but having the ability to articulate to the world what we do and how we do it and why we do it is something that I'm excited to do.
Taste is something that you should always question at the same time. Understanding quality and understanding taste and having a deep appreciation for that is something that is fundamentally important, but that doesn't mean that you're always going to get it right. Good design does have some basic principles. It's the people who can, I would say, understand how that design works.
applies to lots of different industries and sectors and have the capacity to kind of think outside of the box that are ultimately able to thread those common principles through lots of different things.
The people that I respect the most that have the most extraordinary taste, whether it be Bob Iger's ability to understand the difference between what movie is going to work and what movie is not going to work and appreciating creatives. Or you and I have talked a lot about Rick Rubin, why he's able to understand why one musician is better than another is something that is not teachable.
But I think always questioning yourself is something that we constantly do.
Rick Rubin has this incredible line in his book, which is, pay attention to what you notice, but what no one else sees. Rules are limitations. Rules, artists learn, are assumptions. They're not absolutes. And I actually think there's this orientation that rules are things that we learn as adults.
And in reality, when you're younger, you're completely unconstrained with regards to the ways in which you see the world. And I actually think naivety is such a powerful thing. A lot of people in our industry talk about pattern recognition as a positive attribute. We actually talk about pattern recognition as a negative attribute. It actually prevents you from seeing the world differently.
It prevents you from... seeing what the world can be. And I actually think rules are things that can be deeply constraining. And actually, I think in many respects, the ways in which we think about the firm have always pushed the boundaries in terms of what conventional wisdom is for the industry. There have been so many times
that we've been told this is not what a venture capital firm is meant to do. Smile every time. Yeah. Our orientation is, well, if we actually think in first principles around what we're trying to create, we're always going to ask why. Why is that the answer? Why can't we do this? And I actually think as a result of our orientation's
around constantly questioning the norms, we've created something that I think has, in many respects, pushed the boundaries of what we can do. And our ambition is to continue to think outside the box in the ways in which we can continue to build a firm.
Yeah, the line is, lightning strikes the tallest building. And I've always tried to live my life with having my actions speak louder than my words and keep to myself. In addition to that, I just think it's a lot more fun to listen than it is to talk.
When I was in Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway, this meeting, I had the opportunity to spend time with Charlie Munger and he had this great line to me, which really has stuck with me and resonated with me, which was, what's the point in telling everyone all that you know, it's a lot more fun to learn about things that you don't know.
So that's the framework that I have a lot more listening than talking.
Yeah, so The Inner Ring is an essay written by C.S. Lewis. The summarized version is there are rings of people. And when you're on the outside of these rings, you want to be on the inside. It's this desire to feel included. It's this desire to be a part of something. And those that actually chase these rings, they do whatever they can to get inside.
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