Jared Kushner: BrainCo, Affinity Partners, and the Geopolitics of AI
episode
No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
58 min
2 speakers
5 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is Jared Kushner’s background and why is he on the show?
Hi listeners, welcome back to No Priors. I'm Sarah Goa, and Alada and I are here today with Jared Kushner at the Miami headquarters of his investing firm, Affinity Partners. We're here to talk about Affinity, the new co they're launching, Brainco, and his career in government, business, and investing. Welcome, Jared. Jared, thanks so much for doing this with us.
Oh, it's good to be with you guys.
So you have a couple interesting new and new-ish projects. Let's start with Affinity. Um, you were an investor before and you started a firm after your time um as a public servant. What did you do differently?
When I'd left government, I was thinking, what could I do to apply the different learnings that I'd had to my next version of a business career? And as I was studying all the different firms out there, I realized the world didn't need another, you know, couple billion dollar private equity firm. But I tried to focus as I would speak to my friends who were investors on what they needed, what value we could provide. And what we saw was that we had the ability to be uh complex problem solvers. Uh, that's what I didn't did in government. That's what we were good at. And we thought we could do that in partnership with a lot of other firms. So the aspiration with Affinity is to be the most value add and outcome determinative partner to the best entrepreneurs and the best companies in the world.
And so we focused on finding the best companies, thinking through what are their biggest challenges, what are their biggest opportunities, and thinking through how we can partner with them, putting skin in the game by investing with them. A consultant and being in a position where we can then help them achieve their aspirations. And a lot of, you know, we have a very unique large network and uh very trusted by the people we we deal with. And so they open up to us about their challenges and opportunities. And then we're able to, you know, scope and look for different uh solutions. And then we validate them through investment, and then we're able to add value to the companies we're investing in by helping them find.
And new customers and new opportunities.
In what ways do you think companies are not as globally ambitious as they should be, like if they knew what you knew or had the network you did?
I think for most people to be very successful at something, they usually are very focused on an industry or on a geography. And to be exceptional, you have to be uh fairly uh obsessive about whichever of the fields you are trying to be uh exceptional in. And so what happens is is they usually have a lot of perspective in their field or in their geography, but they don't have the time or the knowledge or the network in order to see How people like them are doing similar things throughout the world. And so by having a real global perspective, I was able to see that in most places, if you're successful, you have a fairly um positive and uh and local-centric view of yourself. But when you can look at a global global view, I would say, wow, these guys in in India or these guys in in uh in the Middle East or these guys in Europe, they're doing uh the same business but in a different way.
And so by You know, giving those suggestions, sometimes connecting them together, you can help people who are very good at something accelerate or modify their business in order to do something hopefully better than they would have done without your Right.
My sense is uh Gary Milner kind of did that. When he showed up for Facebook and did a famous investment there, it's because he'd been involved with a core or he started a Russian network, a Russian social network. And so he realized that Facebook could monetize in all these ways that it wasn't doing it. And so that's how he did valuation. And I think at the time everybody thought his valuation was crazy. And how could you invest in Facebook at $5 billion or whatever it was?
How did Jared launch Affinity Partners after leaving government?
And of course now it's like a trillion dollar-ish company. And so I think it's really notable when people kind of bring these cross-border things over.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is Jared Kushner’s background and why is he on the show?
0:05–3:28
2
How did Jared launch Affinity Partners after leaving government?
3:28–8:50
3
Why does Jared think many companies lack a global perspective?
8:50–18:27
4
What macro trends does Affinity use to pick investments?
18:27–57:46
5
How is AI reshaping investment strategy and policy at Affinity?
57:46–58:21
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
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