Invest Like The Best
Episode 337 Building Thrive Capital
Invest Like The Best

Episode 337: Building Thrive Capital

Invest Like The Best

Episode 337

Building Thrive Capital

Josh Kushner is the founder and managing partner of venture firm, Thrive Capital. We cover Thrive's origin story and early investments, why investing in raw potential is important, and what it's like to wear the hats of both founder and builder at the same time.

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(00:03:14) - (First question) - He talks about the nature of being interviewed about himself and his business

(00:06:14) - The development of taste and quality 

(00:10:20) - CS Lewis tweet; The Inner Ring

(00:11:53) - Founders being heroes and motivating quietly from the background

(00:14:33) - The competitive advantages of enduring pain as a founder and investor 

(00:16:14) - Overview the founding story of Oscar Health

(00:19:05) - Under which conditions the ‘why now’ matters more or less to him in investing

(00:21:30) - Whether or not the pleasures and pains of running Oscar are similar to an early-stage business

(00:23:18) - Learning to identify good problems and creating a business to solve it
(00:25:43) - He tells us about the birth story of Thrive Capital
(00:30:14) - Lessons learned from creating the first three Thrive funds moving into fund four

(00:33:35) - Industry wide competition today and models for building a firm in general 

(00:37:44) - Talent, recruiting and seeing potential in younger generations of people

(00:39:38) - His felt experience and views on the immigrant mentality 

(00:39:08) - How he harnesses his story and attitude within the business and his personal life 

(00:43:07) - Determining individuals who want opportunities more than others for his team 

(00:45:40) - Investments he made during the early foundation of Thrive that had significant impact 

(00:46:53) - Whether or not he planned on Thrive being so concentrated
(00:49:12) - His analogy for investing in early versus late stage and styles of real estate investing
(00:52:08) - When a company is ready for 5th Avenue and mistaking a 3rd Avenue company for a 5th Avenue one

(00:54:22) - The current macro environment and how they affect his investment decisions   

(00:57:52) - Giving AI companies computing power instead of money and the brilliance behind that innovation 

(00:58:57) - Why he sold small stakes of Thrive
(01:00:13) - Setting and controlling his own ambition and maintaining purity that Thrive

(01:01:42) - How he manages the tension between Thrive and being a pure play investor
(01:03:10) - His philosophy on what makes a good product

(01:05:20) - What he thinks about the models like Mobile and Cloud 

(01:08:10) - His absence from crypto and why he refrained during the boom in 2021

(01:10:33) - Thoughts about the opportunity set in FinTech today writ large

(01:12:04) - Other potential opportunity sets beyond what’s already been discussed

(01:13:39) - Lessons learned from his time spent with Marc Andreessen
(01:15:00) - Someone he believes is one of the greatest communicators
(01:15:43) - Lessons learned from Stan Druckenmiller, Henry Kravis, and David Geffen

(01:18:43) - Children fill a void you didn’t know you had and changes from becoming a father

(01:20:09) - Firm values he thinks are very important
(01:21:59) - Balancing magnitudes of capital between investment funds 

(01:23:32) - Why he thinks founders choose Thrive

(01:26:39) - His most unusual interest he feels pulled back into time and again

(01:27:22) - What he finds intriguing about installation art

(01:29:15) - Vision as a key ingredient for founders

(01:30:13) - What he’s learned about negotiating with late stage investments

(01:32:19) - His view of the investment industry in the world today writ large 

(01:35:56) - Aspects about Thrive’s story that he would like us to understand

(01:39:07) - Kareem Zaki’s successful healthcare investing track record

(01:40:19) - Other investment firms he would invest in
(01:42:48) - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Building Thrive Capital

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Josh Kushner, Founder and Managing Partner of venture firm Thrive Capital. Josh started Thrive in 2010 and launched its first institutional fund in 2011. That first institutional fund was $40 million and in it Thrive led Warby Parker's Series A, invested in Instagram, and incubated the business, which Josh cofounded, called Oscar.

Thrive has gone from strength to strength since and now manages $15 billion with a small team of nine investors. Their portfolio is stage-agnostic and their track record includes many of the best-known businesses from the past decade, including Spotify, Unity, Stripe, and Twitch, among many more. Josh rarely speaks in public about the firm and their philosophy, so it was a blast to do this with him. Please enjoy my conversation with Josh Kushner.

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