Josh Kushner - Concentration and Conviction

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at colossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:15)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUMVC.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:43)
This is my second conversation with Josh Kushner, founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital. I recorded this conversation with Josh back in October after we published the Colossus cover story about him and Thrive. Given the overwhelming spread of that story, we decided to create some breathing room between it and this conversation. Josh started Thrive in 2011 The firm now manages approximately $50 billion with a very small investment team. What makes Thrive different is how concentrated they are and how involved they get with the companies that they back. In this conversation, we covered the iconic investments that defined Thrive, Instagram, Stripe, GitHub, and spent a lot of time on OpenAI. Josh explains how Thrive thinks about investing today and the three categories that they are currently focused on. Josh also talks about how he built the firm, why they keep the team so small, and what he's learned from A24 about enabling artists to create their best work. He shares the personal stories that shaped him, including his grandmother's experience surviving the Holocaust, and what he learned from Stan Druckenmiller, Jon Winkelried, and others at formative moments in Thrive's history. Please enjoy My Great Conversation with Josh Kushner.
When we first did this, I think a lot of people knew You, and a lot of people knew Thrive, but it's changed a lot since two years ago. I saw a survey recently where some recruiter profiled, I don't know, hundreds of people that asked them where they wanted to go work, which venture firms, and Thrive was number one, and it had more than two times the votes of the next highest firm, which was like Sequoia or something like this. I know you hold this in two lights. Tell me about how it's felt over the last two years and how Thrive itself has changed since we last did this.