Josh Kushner

“I called Stan up, and I said, Stan, I need to see you today. And he says, of course, come by. I drove uptown. And I said to him, Stan, we've been doing the exact same thing for a long time. We've always been concentrated in the businesses that we believe have the generational characteristics to compound on themselves for a very long period of time. We sold a lot in '21, and we've leaned in very meaningfully in this moment. And I feel like I'm running into a burning building taking my most favorite possessions, and everyone thinks I'm crazy. And his response, which I'll never forget, is, That's always the right decision. You just better fucking pick right.”

“John Winker Reed, who's now the CEO of TPG, who was spending time with us after his time at Goldman Sachs, called me as a 26, 27 year old who had just done a transaction that was on the cover of The Wall Street Journal. I was expecting to get a congratulations. And John said to me, I'm gonna give you the greatest lesson that you'll ever get from me, which is never believe your own bullshit. And I remember how piercing that was in the moment, but taking a step back, it was the right advice. I actually wrote it on Post it notes. I think Thrive is only 10 people at that time, and I put it on every single person's computer so that when they got into the office on Monday morning, they saw it.”

“Instagram raised at $500,000,000. We had a $40,000,000 fund. We put in $12,000,000 between our fund and co investment. It sold two days later. When the investment was announced, people were giving us a very hard time for investing in a company at a half $1,000,000,000 valuation. But when a billion dollars was a lot for a company to sell for, we were starting to get recognized.”

“So we had agreed to terms with John and Patrick at a $50,000,000,000 price, which is 50% discount to what they had done a year prior. For us, it was very obvious. It's much easier to predict what is going to happen in the long term than it is in the short term. If there's one thing that I could predict between now and the day that I die, it's that people buy more stuff on the Internet every year. It was the largest check that we had ever written at that point. I think we invested about $1,800,000,000. But as a result of the moment in the market, but also the size of check that we were writing, everyone asked to speak to us. And I think what was most interesting was the fact that everyone was so focused on the now.”

“We invested in GitHub in 2014. We were fortunate enough to participate in the initial round with what was the big check for us at the time, which was $20,000,000. Almost a month into our investment, Chris Womstrah, who is the CEO, decided to move on from a disproportionate amount of his leadership team. The outside perspective of the business was considered to be troubled, but our general view is the only way to truly develop context on businesses is suspend meaningful time. Some of the earlier founders associated with the business wanted to get liquidity. Thryv was the only person who wanted to buy the shares, and we feel very grateful for the outcome. Thrive owned about 10%, and no one knew.”

“A couple of months later, Sam gave me access to the Chat Ship deep review, which is all it was meant to be. It wasn't meant to be the product that has captivated the world. It was really meant to be something that could show the world what these models were ultimately capable of. I just couldn't unsee it. One night, I was sitting at our kitchen table. It was probably one or 02:00 in the morning, and Carly had woken up, and she came to the kitchen and asked what I was doing. And I showed her, and I expressed to her that I thought that this was gonna change the world.”

“Insecurity is the greatest driver of innovation. It's the greatest driver of progress. It's the thing that jump starts everything, but it can't be the end goal. If that is the place that you're operating from in perpetuity, it's a very dangerous thing because it's a never winning game. There can always be more.”

“My grandmother was a very special person to me. She was an absolute hero in my eyes. Her story is really one of impossibility and resilience and perseverance. She grew up in a small town in Belarus, was put into a ghetto with a bunch of other Jews, dug a tunnel with other people in her town to escape with a spoon 600 feet after experiencing and witnessing her sister get murdered, her mother get murdered before her eyes, to escape into the forest to live with the Bielski partisans, to come to America with my grandfather and nothing, with the exception of the shirts on their back.”

“I've worn the same swatch skin since college. The story of it is I went to Latin America at the end of my freshman year. Had a really wonderful time with my college roommate at the time. We were riding in a car through Guatemala City. Someone in a motorbike pulled up next to us and put a gun to my head. My window was open and started screaming in Spanish. My friend took off his watch, took his phone and handed it to him, and he said to me, give him everything you have. I took off my watch, and I handed it to him. And he looked at it, and he handed it back, and he drove away. I'll never wear another watch.”

“True power doesn't shout, it acts quietly and decisively. There's this great line from Denzel Washington from American Gangster, the loudest person in the room is always the weakest person in the room.”