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
We are very focused on the inputs, not the outputs. Going back to the Andy Golden comment that he made to me, if I said to you right now, Thrive is $15 billion. Our ambition is to be $100 billion in 10 years from now. Bad ambition. It would be the wrong way to think about things.
My view is we need to focus on what has enabled us to get to where we are today, which is how do we have the highest density of human capital in our industry? How do we create an environment where people feel so empowered to do big, bold, ambitious things? How do we be the most meaningful partner to our founders? How do we be great fiduciaries for our limited partners?
How do we create the most exceptional culture of transparency and kindness? And then whatever it ends up being, it will be. Of course, we want to partner with the most extraordinary founders who are making the biggest impact in the world. We want to be there by their sides. We want to build some of these companies ourselves. and we want to do it for a very long time.
But I think thinking about the inputs is the right way to approach the problem.
Kareem, Nitin, Nori, our chairman, Nabil and I were talking about this last night, which is ultimately as the firm has grown, we've gone from people who are just making music to in some respects being conductors. But our view is the danger that a lot of firms have is that they just focus on conducting.
And when you're just focused on conducting, but you're not making any music, you actually shouldn't know what notes sound good and what notes that don't sound good. You shouldn't know who the best violinist is. So as an organization, we've always been very committed, irrespective of the fact that we have to manage the firm and its ambitions.
We need to spend a disproportionate amount of our time making music. And that's how we do spend our time. You need to do both. You need to lead. But you also need to be focused on getting better at the craft. If you're not focused on getting better at the craft every day, then you become mediocre.
It's less about the process. It's the intention of the process. So there's obviously different ways in which you can go about learning and But I think the intellectual honesty that goes into the process is something that I have found has benefited us the most to actually develop our own informed points of views and perspectives.
So when we're sitting around the table talking about an opportunity, everyone is approaching that conversation with a level of humility and self-awareness that none of us can predict the future. One of the most humbling moments in my career was right after I invested in Instagram, Snap started to grow in a very meaningful way. And Instagram was one of these products where I used it. I loved it.
I understood it. The natural expectation was that because I understood one social product, I should understand the other. And I actually didn't get Snap. I didn't appreciate it.
And I think as I started my career, there's this expectation that... And while I do believe that instinct is a very powerful thing, and people should trust their instincts, I was under this point of view that in this industry, you are just meant to trust your instincts.
But if our jobs are to break the future, if any of us could, we should be doing things a lot more important in our lives than investing in companies. So... I think the mindset that we take is none of us can predict the future. We just need to have an intellectually honest conversation about where we think the world is going, develop our informed points of views.
But that intellectual honesty and that intention around actually learning is what enables us to develop our conclusions.
I think it's the most exciting paradigm shift that I've had the opportunity to be exposed to in my career because of the potential implications of it.
When you start to think way out in terms of what these models can do in terms of transforming processes that exist in our lives or incredible services that exist in our lives or very human, real aspects of the ways in which we live, whether it be health or drug discovery or things of that nature, it's exciting, it's powerful.
We've been amazed by all that the company has done in such a short period of time since Chachi PT has launched. Obviously, they've been working on the product for a very long period of time.
I think from an investor's perspective, and as we're thinking about building companies in the space as well, I think one of the trickiest things is not whether or not value will be created, but where will value ultimately accrue to.
And obviously, we made an extremely large investment in OpenAI as a result of the fact that we think a lot of value and a lot of impact as a result of the fact that we think that they have an extraordinary product, but also... A very high density of talent building in the space will accrue to them, but where it ultimately falls elsewhere is something that we're still spending time on.
I think the insights that exist today and as to whether or not these insights will be relevant in a couple of years from now is one, this feels like the first paradigm shift that I've been exposed to in my career where the incumbent has the first right of refusal.
As a result of the fact that this is an API-based paradigm shift as opposed to an operating system-based paradigm shift, the ability for every company to access the same technology at the exact same time puts people in a position in which they can utilize this technology to improve their businesses.
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