Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy Josh Kushner - Concentration and Conviction - [Invest Like the Best, EP.459]
Product + People = Compounders
- Product and people orientation finds companies with compounding, category-defining potential.
- Once a product gains velocity, it's hard to slow and becomes a wedge to much larger opportunities.
OpenAI Aha Moment
- Josh's OpenAI aha: ChatGPT preview made him realize the product could reach distribution and change the world.
- He showed it to his wife at 1–2am and "couldn't unsee it."
Price For Long-Term Scale
- Imagine private company ambition at trillion-dollar public scale when pricing big private rounds.
- Josh argues it's plausible that private firms today could become half-trillion or trillion-dollar companies.
This is my second conversation with Josh Kushner, founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital.
I recorded this conversation in October after publishing the Colossus cover story about him and Thrive. Given the overwhelming response, we created some breathing room before releasing it.
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 their portfolio companies.
We cover the iconic investments that defined Thrive: Instagram, Stripe, GitHub, and spend a lot of time on OpenAI. Josh explains how Thrive thinks about investing today and the three categories they're currently focused on.
Josh also talks about building the firm, why they keep the team small, and what he's learned from A24 about enabling artists to do their best work.
He shares personal stories that shaped him, including his grandmother's experience surviving the Holocaust, and lessons from Stan Druckenmiller, Jon Winkelried, and others at formative moments in Thrive's history.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best
(00:02:43) Intro: Josh Kushner
(00:03:46) How Thrive Has Changed Since 2023
(00:05:18) Thrive’s Entrepreneurial Culture
(00:12:22) The Power of Small Teams
(00:13:35) Sponsors
(00:14:35) Concentration as Differentiation
(00:16:16) The Github Deal
(00:18:08) Lesson from Stan Druckenmiller
(00:20:37) Leading Stripe’s $50 Billion Round
(00:23:16) Instagram: Doubling an Investment in Days
(00:25:43) Isomorphic: Thrive as an Enabling Technology
(00:27:04) Thrive & A24
(00:28:19) OpenAI: The Product Josh Couldn’t Unsee
(00:32:09) Pricing the OpenAI Investment
(00:33:40) OpenAI and Power
(00:35:26) Finding Joy in Hard Work
(00:39:15) Inside View of the Tech & AI Landscape
(00:42:28) Three Investment Categories Thrive is Focused On
(00:44:37) Thrive Holdings: Inside-Out Disruption
(00:48:54) Competition in Venture
(00:50:49) Sponsors
(00:51:48) Thrive’s Immutable Values
(00:54:21) A Family Story of Survival
(00:56:43) The American Dream
(00:58:03) What Artists Can Teach Investors
(01:00:26) Never Compromise Your Values
(01:01:33) The Story Behind Josh’s Forever Watch