Josh Kushner - Concentration and Conviction - [Invest Like the Best, EP.459]

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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 age 24 about enabling artists to create their best work. He shares the personal stories that shape him, including his grandmother's experience surviving the Holocaust and what he learned from Stan Druck and Miller, John Winkle Reid, and others' informative moments in Thrive's history. Please enjoy my great conversation with Josh Krishner.

“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 profile don't know hundreds of people that asked them where they wanted to go work, which venture firms in Thrive is 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 knew 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. A lot has changed and in many ways so much is stayed the same. We're building a company that company just happens to be Thrive. The company has a product and it is to invest and be the most meaningful partner to this that we're fortunate to partner with. With that dimension in mind, we are constantly pushing ourselves as far as we possibly can to make ourselves better. External validation can distort even the most disciplined minds and just as

we have ignored critics in the past. We guard ourselves against the lower of praise. Having the types of individuals that we've had at the firm that have had the capacity to truly think independently is what has gotten us to where we are today, but it's really important that we ignore the noise

who joins is doing so with that same independent thought. I think Thrive is a very small percentage of its potential. I feel like we're just going to start it. What does it like to run an investing firm where entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial people define the culture? It feels much more entrepreneurial of a culture than an academic investing type culture. Maybe say a little bit more about why that's the case and why you cultivate that. I remember vividly getting a call or

early on in the days of Thrive were a very prominent endowment pass on Thrive because they said that

“I was too much of an entrepreneur. I think in the earlier days of Thrive, we felt shame in that.”

We almost felt like we had to hide our ambition within Thrive. I was told that investment managers building investment firms were not meant to be ambitious. Do you think that that comment you hear that sometimes amongst allocators, LPs maybe, is that the problem with ambition is that it means scale of assets and scale of assets means eroding returns. Is that the thing underneath that

endowments comment? The ambition of Thrive has never been around the scale of the assets that we

have. I think we're just very focused on the input orientation of what we're doing every day. Do we have the best culture? Do we have the best process or recruiting the best possible product for our founders? I think for us focusing on a particular number will ultimately lead to the wrong outcomes. We're not looking to write these very meaningful checks. It was very much in service of the opportunity. There will be moments in time where the opportunity does not exist to write

very large checks and we won't. The distortion you mentioned earlier of praise, now everyone wants to work at Thrive. How do you protect against the inverse problem? How do you make sure that you still select for the same kind of people that got you here? One of my favorite books is Meditations by Marcus Relyes. He has this incredible concept early on in the book

“about this idea of the same man. You should be the same man in both good times and in bad times.”

One of the things that I'm most proud of of the organization that we have is that people were somewhat unfazed over a decade and a half of being criticized for our strategy, the construction of the team, the size of the team, some of the types of investments that we made, the size of the investments that we made. We feel very grateful that these things have worked out and people have paid attention to them but also not to be taken away by these things and to continue to keep our

heads down, have humility. It gets really important that as an organization we continue to be open-minded to the idea that some of our convictions might not be right. Humility and self-awareness

are the most important characteristics of any organization, any individual, and I think it's important

that we just continue to think of every single situation with an objective lens. How do you interview people differently if at all to make sure you're not getting people that are there because it's thrive a cool brand versus the type of person you love when you personally are doing the interviews? We still look for the same things. I really want to understand who people are, where they come from, what motivates them, what drives them, what they feel like they owe the world

as a result of what their experiences have been, how grateful they are to be in the position that they are in. I was interviewing a candidate about six months ago and they said to me, "Why is everyone at thrive so driven and so motivated?" And my quick off-the-cuff comment was, "People are

“their first generation of thrive or from the most hated state in the country." I think there's this”

incredible chip on people's shoulder at the firm in security as 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 and perpetuity,

it's a very dangerous thing, because it's never winning game. There can always be more. We've

done a very good job of building an organization of people who come from certain places or have certain backgrounds who feel since responsibility or gratitude for the positions that they're in, but also at the same time, if you're operating purely from a place, if I have something to prove to the world, just at least speaking from personal experiences, the world doesn't actually care. To the extent that you have, how do you help usher people from the spark of motivation that

comes from its security to the more abiding source of motivation that comes from passion or joy?

struggles or association with politics that external validation can be very dangerous, and it also can be very fleeting. What is the point in trying to prove something to someone else or caring about what other people think? In reality, if they don't really care that much at all, a lot of the

“people that are out the firm, I think have made that transition, they all started with this”

desire feeling like they had to prove something to someone else. One of the things that I've been

able to impart on people is you'll never win if that's the ultimate goal. Maybe I clicked more about

the culture of thrive. It's so interesting that miles was with you from the beginning, went to one of the other great venture firms benchmark came back to thrive. I'm so curious about the ways that you can keep the culture to its most essential elements. We've always believed that artists like to live in artists colonies and it's our job to ensure that we have the right people within the organization that are constantly pushing us forward and pushing us to learn as much as we can.

The things that we look for in the people that are at the firm are very similar to the things that we look for in the founders that we hope to partner with, which is self-awareness, humility, drive, ambition. One of the things that I'm most proud of within the organization is this incredible open-mindedness to the idea that we have just a tremendous amount to learn. Many people view vulnerability as a sign of weakness, but if you are willing to say, "I don't know the answer,"

that is actually the most extraordinary sign of confidence. We've always had this orientation that

“the only way to have a team is to have a small team and the only way to have a small team”

is to have a group of people that everyone mutually respects. If you respect everyone else around the table, the conversations are really oriented towards trying to get to the right answer. It's impossible for us to make the right decisions every time, but we can't ensure that we have the right conversations. Why are small teams such a key concept for you? Why do you think they're so powerful? Why don't you have a hundred-person investment team? Since the early days, I really

wanted to thrive to feel like a company. I think there's always been this dynamic that has existed within investment organizations that the investment team is one matters and other people matter less. Our core belief is we wanted every single person within our organization to be the

best possible person in that role. In order to have that you need to give everyone incredible

transparency around everything that you're doing, give them the autonomy and the responsibility to ensure that even if they're not within the investment organization, they're helping us get to the right decisions. The reason why we've been able to stay so small, not just us in investment team, but us in organization is because across every dimension of our business, we have these 10x people. Whether being legal, finance, compliance, or engineering organization, are portfolio

“support and impact team. I think people feel like they're responsible for every decision that we”

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that he thinks that there's only two firms that have true differentiation, his firm and yours. And that the reason that yours did was that there was no one else willing to make the size of bet the conviction of the bet at the stage of the company at a price. By doing that early, you were the person that people called for this specific thing. How much of that was the

Versus it just being a natural consequence of you doing you. It was a natural consequence of the firm being intuitive around where we thought that the world was moving. We think of ourselves as a service provider. We were not looking to put meaningful capital to work the companies that we were partnered with needed to raise meaningful capital. And in order to be the best possible partner to them, we needed to do whatever we needed to do to support them in that capacity. But there wasn't

some grand meeting of no one's providing a billion dollar checks to these big companies. We should do it.

It was more bottom up. It was more company specific. Stripe needed to raise $6 billion or else they had to go public. And it was our job to find a way to get them that capital. Open AI is a very capital intensive business. It was our job to get them that capital. Same with Databricks. We did not view it from an output orientation. It was an input orientation which was

“our job as to serve these companies. I think it would be really fun to review some of the”

iconic deals that maybe people scratch their heads about through drive history. It seems like when you tell the story of the business and of your investment arc, there are these hash marks have been incredibly defining things that you've done. The first one that really really caught my attention was GitHub, which I think was in fun for something like that. It turned out to be a huge percent of that fund and a very large return. But probably at the time, people were scratching

their heads about it. Can you tell me that story in as much detail as possible since it seemed fairly formative? We invested in GitHub in 2014. We were fortunate to participate in the initial round

with what was the big check for us at the time, which was $20 million, almost a month into our

investment, Chris Wantsdrauth, who is the CEO, decided to move on from a disproportionate amount of his leadership team. And Nebel, who had just joined from 3G running finance for Hines. We're doing ketchup, as he says. A lot of similarities to software moved out to the West Coast and effectively became the CFO of the business. 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.”

This has been meaningful time. And that's why we have such a concentrated portfolio to really understand every aspect of everything that we're part of in a very intimate way. The more time and energy that we spent, the more convicted that we became, that a lot of the things that were happening were noise. Some of the earlier founders associated with the business wanted together quickly, Thrive 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. What did it feel like to have that much concentration? This deal is so interesting to me because it highlights two things that have driven a lot of your success, which is very concentrated and very involved. And maybe in GitHub's case, the nominal price has a multiple of revenue or something was high at the point of entry. And then you're under a huge multiple on capital and relatively short order. These ingredients have been very

common to some of the important stories around Thrive's investments. Was that the first one that you had that degree of insight understanding and concentration? And did that in bolden you to do more of that kind of investing? The authenticity of our desire to be the most meaningful partners, a very important construct for us, our desire to only partner with very few is driven by our core belief that in order for us to truly deliver the full value of ourselves. We can only

commit ourselves to so many things. I remember we had just invested in Stripe at 50 billion. We had led OpenAI's investment. We had just got asked by Eric and Creme from Bram to lead investment in the company at a lower price in the round that was done in 2021. We were getting absolutely eviscerated by everyone in the ecosystem. One of the people that I respect the most is Dan Drucken Miller. I called Stan up and I said, "San, I need to see you today." And he says, "Of course,

come by. Drove up town." 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 2021 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 it's response

“which I'll never forget is that's always the right decision. You just better fucking pick right.”

Concentration is core to what we do. It puts a true burden on all of us to ensure that

that we have to eliminate partners but also at the same time to the founders that we are committing ourselves to. We want to ensure that everyone knows that we are 100% on their team. We are in the corner. There's only truth-tellers and foxholes. And we try our best to be that person for the people that we work with. I want to talk about the huge transaction that you let in stripe at around $50 billion a couple years ago. Striped by any account is one of the most interesting

dominant franchises of this last cycle. John Patrick, some of the best entrepreneurs alive. And yet, it was a really interesting time and round. Back to our original premise of our conversation, one of the defining shaping deals investments that you've made. Maybe just say a little bit more about that process and that experience because it seemed to set the stage for Databricks and other deals like it that you've done since. They're the details of how the deal

“happened. But I think more importantly, the experience for us in terms of learning about how other”

people think in certain moments was probably the most transformational thing for the firm. So we had agreed to terms with John and Patrick at a $50 billion 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 died, that people were by more stuff on the internet every year,

it was a large check that we had ever written at that point. I think we invested about $1.8 billion dollars. But as a result of the moment in the market, but also the size of check that we were writing, ever an asset speed to us. I think what was most interesting was the fact that everyone was so focused on the now. They were so focused on what audience multiple was. They were so focused on

what the margin structures look like in that very specific moment post COVID. We've always had this

idea of being long-term investors and what we believe to be categorized finding businesses run by the most exceptional people. But it was just really interesting to see how other people thought in that moment. When you have a very product and founder oriented investment style, the capacity to have conviction is very much driven by people's ability to figure things out. And there will be bad quarters. There will be bad years. But if you believe in the people who are running the business,

ultimately everything will end up okay, Vince has to slide that John and Patrick went into founder mode before founder mode was the thing. The idea that anyone could ever doubt,

Patrick and John is blasphemy. And a lot of people did doubt them in that moment. They should never be

doubted. One is tempted after a deal like that $2 billion check. I don't know what it's about it. Now, probably back north of $100 billion. At least in secondary markets to pat oneself on the back. Can you tell the Instagram story and the message that you've got you doubled your money in Instagram and like days or something in your original Instagram investment? Again, tempted to pat oneself on the back. Both the fun story after that. I feel very grateful to Kevin

“every time I see him or Mikey. I think them because I think in many respects they were huge”

contributors to thrive being the firm that it is. Then giving us the shot to be a part of such a hotly coveted opportunity is something that I have enormous gratitude for. Thrive was a no-name New York firm. We were pushing this agenda of being this opportunistic vehicle that was a nostalgic to stage Secretary geography. Instagram raised at $500 million dollars. We had a $40 million fund. We put in $12 million 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 a billion dollar valuation. But when a billion dollars was a lot for a company to sell for, we were starting to get recognized. And I remember vividly I was standing in our office on the Sunday afternoon and John Winkle read who's now the CEO of TPG who is spending time with us after his time at Goldman Sachs called me. I was a 26, 27 year old who had just done a

transaction that was on the cover of the Wall Street Journal as expecting to get a congratulations. And John said to me, I'm going to give you the greatest lesson that you'll ever get for 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 red advice. Actually wrote it on posted notes. I think Thrive”

is only 10 people all that time and I put it on every single person's computer so that when they

right. We're going to be wrong, but it's really important that we recognize that in our world, we're trying to predict the future. And anyone who convinces themselves that they are capable of viewing so is not being true to themselves. It's our job to have the right conversations around these things, but intellectual honesty and self-awareness has been a huge part of the right decisions that we've made and I'm very grateful to him. Can you tell the story of Isomorphic and the creation

of deals, which is creating a company in a deal that you didn't necessarily start, but which you

“created out of thin air, which I think is so interesting and creative. The quote that I heard”

from Demis about the work you did with him to get Isomorphic as a standalone thing that you invested in out of deep mind was that he should stop being so British about it and get a little bit more aggressive. Maybe tell the Demis Isomorphic story. We are very much oriented, dot towards transactions, but companies or ideas that we want to be a part of. I've known Demis for quite some time after AlphaFault came out. I expressed to him that I would be very excited to support him in whatever

way I could around his efforts within Isomorphic. A lot of the products that are being created within the AI ecosystem, whether it be around robotics or coding are going to lead to tremendous transformation in the world that we currently live in. We view thrive as a enabling technology for the world that we wish to see. The idea of creating a company that's and goal is to cure

disease is probably the most important thing that we could ever be a part of. I feel very honored

and grateful to have the opportunity to partner with him and the rest of the Isomorphic team. You and I've talked a lot about the difference between the enablers and the artists themselves age 24 and Dan Katsum and the enormous fan of is building something really interesting and really

“special that I think has some elements in common with how you think about thrive. Can you tell us”

about the relationship and why you made an investment in any parallels that you see that you think are useful? It's really important that we understand our place within the ecosystem. Our founders are heroes. We're not DaVinci, we're Medici and it's our opportunity to enable the artists that

were fortunate to support to create their masterpieces. I've always been fascinated by a 24

because there have been a lot of analogs to thrive story. They have captivated Hollywood by being based in New York. They keep to themselves. They're very focused on the director, the actor, in the same ways in which I think we're very focused on the founder. It's very input driven around how do you create the best work? How do you support the people who are actually the creators in this ecosystem? I've learned to law firm him and the team as they have gone on to make

extraordinary art by supporting the people that are making it. The notion of investing in Schith Avenue and the very best assets in a given category is something we talked about a lot last time. I want to expand upon that around OpenAI as a specific example. It's such an interesting thing to me that so much of the power and the value can accrue to the number one player. I heard Pierre Taylor say recently, if he was to go back and rewrite any part of zero to one, he has that

chapter on the four types of monopoly that he would maybe give scale. It's own chapter, separate from the other three and this notion of all the resources occurring around the leader. Maybe see a little bit about that ongoing education you've had on that concept and then we'll use it to talk about

“OpenAI. There's two things that we have historically focused on as a firm. I think it's the”

products that companies are building and the people that are running them. Our product first orientation and our people first orientation has led us to partner with these businesses that have the characteristics that have the capacity to compound on themselves for very long periods of time. Ultimately at the end of the day, I think the beauty of our world is that you can product out into the market with the universal, totally decides whether or not they like it or not.

We've tried our best into these things as much as possible. But once these things start to have the loss of it, it's very hard for them to slow down and ultimately those things become wedges into much larger opportunities over time. So, OpenAI, I want to go first back to the moment that you had your personal aha moment, speaking of products, most magical product of the last 20 years probably. What did you see? What did you feel? How did you think about it in those early

days? This is, I guess, before the $29 billion valuation round that you've led, which I think

was your first investment in OpenAI. Bring us in the room around how you came to it, how you were thinking about it, and the moment you had a realization. I feel really grateful to have the opportunity

It's really open my eyes to new things that I've had to learn in order to be the most supportive

“partner to them. I believe that this was the most important prize worth winning. It was the best”

team going after something that we had always believed had the possibility of taking shape in the

world. But historically, we've always been excited about artificial intelligence and ML, but the only companies that truly had the capacity to build these models were those with existing distribution. I originally approached Sam, who had known for the previous decade, because of his role in YC about investing in OpenAI in March of 2022. We had played with it quite a bit, a thrive, and started to get excited about the concentration of talent, but also our core belief

that in this moment, if compute and research was all that matter, they were most set up to ultimately succeed. A couple of months later, Sam gave me access to the Chash of 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 about these models. We're ultimately capable of just cutting and unsee it. One night, I was sitting at our kitchen table. It was probably

one or two o'clock 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 her that I thought that this was going to change the world, the combination of research, talent, density, access to compute, and more importantly, a product that I thought could reach distribution as well, gave us the confidence that we should ultimately make the investment. How did you get to that price at the time in the original route? The hesitancy around the

company had more to do with the fact that the idea of investing in private companies at these prices was not something that people on our industry were meant to do. We've done things a little bit differently, and that we have tried our best to imagine the world in the way in which we thought

it should be as opposed the way in which it had always historically been. The criticism that we faced

for a couple of years was predominantly around this idea that LMS would get commoditized, the world would move towards open source, all the value we get created at the application layer.

“I think it was more the industry trying to fit in a narrative around the ecosystem that would”

play to the way in which the industry was meant to operate. Our general framing was we're living in a time in which there are multi-trailing dollar companies, three, four, trillion in and those companies will likely by the end of this decade be seven to ten trillion dollar companies. The idea that there would be private companies today that could be worth half a trillion

or trillion dollars is not inconceivable, especially the most important category of finding companies

within this ecosystem. It was more a mental shift for people to actually lean into the market in that way where it was very obvious to us based on the fact that a disproportionate amount of value that has occurred in the public markets has occurred to less than ten companies. We believe that the same thing would happen in the private markets as well. You mentioned that working with open AI specifically has taught you things that you didn't know before about like what it takes

and how to operate, what does it tell you? I'm working so closely with them. It's been extraordinary to get exposed to the people who are operating at the company, but I also think in many respects it's been a fascinating human experience. There is so much perception of power and value associated with this company that it's exposed me to how the world thinks around these things and how people act in certain situations and have been very proud of how the company has handled itself despite

many people not acting in as appropriate ways to use the Lord of the Rings analogy, Sam, Greg, Open AI have the ring and everyone is willing to do whatever they can to take it. Do you think

“power corrupts in some general sense? Yes. How have you felt that? How have you avoided it yourself?”

You're not in a position of quite a lot of power. My personal experiences have taught me that everything can disappear very quickly. Many people respond to these situations where they start to believe things about themselves or the situations that they're in in somewhat unrealistic ways. The opportunity to make an impact is a privilege that people shouldn't take for granted and it's important to handle these moments with gratitude and humility. True

power doesn't shout, it acts quietly and decisively. There's this great line from Denzel Washington

I was talking to Sam all about your and his and thrive in Open AI's relationship. And I said something to the effect of, I know some of the big stories that we've told already but I said tell me like a really small story. Like a tiny even yet and he said at one point he was recruiting an engineer probably up against one of the other lab companies. It was very competitive and they called you it two in the morning and somehow you really heard the phone ring

or whatever picked up and got on the phone with the engineer from two to three thirty in the morning just directly like an icy engineer and the guy signed. I thought those such an awesome story and it brings up a question for me which is can you describe just how hard you work? I feel like it gets a little bit glossed over. Some of these things look amazing in hindsight. It just seems so incredibly intense and I'd love to hear how you might describe it.

If you have to pick between the most educated person, the most experienced person or the

person who wants it the most, you always pick the person who wants it the most. Thrive is

built a culture of the people who want it the most. We are willing to do whatever we need to do to be in service to this. I'll be work with. I don't think of it as work because I love what I do but it is my job to do whatever I need to do to support those that were fortunate enough to be partnered with. One of the operating principles is deriving joy from hard work. Maybe say a bit more about what it's like and the joy aspect of pushing oneself to one's limits which sounds like

“a white knuckle experience but I think can also be joyful. What do you think about that idea?”

If you're at a grief like back on the history of the firm and the people out the firm were constantly pushing ourselves to try to be the best that we possibly can be. I think sometimes these moments are stressful but there's this concept of post-traumatic stress that people often talk about which has devastated a lot of people but there's a very small end of people that are actually able to benefit from something called post-traumatic growth. If you are thrown into a very

complex situation and you're able to navigate through it you're able to build a toolkit for the future. I don't think we seek out these complex situations but I do think as a result of us being thrown into them either personally or professionally we're able to deal with them.

But I think in terms of pushing ourselves to our limits it is amazing what one is capable of

if they push themselves as far as they can. When do you feel and how do you feel extreme to rest or stress? I've got to know you well now and see you in a number of these moments. It actually seems like you on average get calmer and better in the crazy moments. Are you actually calm in those moments or are you freaking out? And if you're not freaking out in those moments what does freak you out? It was funny. Carly got to acupuncture recently as she was pregnant.

The person who's there said to me "Just you want to do it" and I said of course I'm happy to do it just to live by her side and he said "Are you experiencing any stress at the moment?" And I said to him "I've been stressed so much for so long but I don't feel anything at all."

I've always fundamentally believed that every experience is training you for the next one.

There's this great line that I share with my family recently. In order to become King

“God didn't give David a crown he gave him Goliath and I think it's one of these”

true lessons that in life every experience is meant to make you better. Every experience is meant to push you further. If you think of these moments as ways to learn and to grow and to become the best version of yourself you don't wish them on anyone else but also the same time you wouldn't take them back because it's pushed you to the next level. Coming back to the experience with Openan because you work so closely with them I'm curious whether that

inside view has made you do certain investments that you wouldn't have otherwise or maybe more interestingly not do other investments that maybe you would have otherwise. What is being inside that business teach you about where AI is and where it's going? This industry is not just about the deals that you do but it's also about the things that you don't do. Being inside of the business and learning from the people that I was fortunate to learn from within the company helped us

avoid a lot of things that are ultimately not going to be on the right side of history. What these

“large labs weren't going to do that we thought were going to be a large opportunity so I think”

pushed us in certain directions as well. When you think about AI just in general today you've got one of the best views of it. Does the market feel frothy to you? Stripe and OpenAI. There weren't exactly lines of bidders out the door at the time that those companies needed capital from their partners. The line was you. Now at least my experience of it is that AI for name anything cameras has

situations where everyone wants to invest. The first and most important fundamental view is this

core belief that this paradigm shift is the most important of our lifetimes. The internet was this incredibly democratizing technology in that it gave access to information. Anyone with a mobile phone living anywhere in the world has more access to information than the price United States did at the turn of the century. My view has always been that AI has potential to democratize access to intelligence and the capacity for everyone to really get insight and perspective

on any topic in a very nuanced way and to be able to interact with that is something that has potential to be very powerful. I also think enterprise adoption will ultimately lead to businesses becoming more efficient and that also has potential to benefit consumers in a very

“meaningful way because the only way to compete in a decade from now will be are you a better product”

or are you a cheaper product. There is going to be so much transformation, so much enterprise value created but naturally that will lead to a lot of people trying to chase the paradigm shift in ultimately capital loss as well. It's very dangerous in moments like this to both be exuberant or of a more negative perspective because the types of things that are getting created in this moment could make a fairly meaningful impact on the next decade's ahead. That being said,

I've always viewed the best investors or leaders of investment firms as race car drivers.

You need to know when to drive at the speed limit, you need to know when to pull over to the side of the road and change your tires and then I think like we did over the last couple of years you need to know when to look both ways, put your foot on the gas pedal and gun it. As you view the landscape today, what kinds of investments are you most focused on? Are there

“certain areas that you're tuning your attention, types of investments that interest you most?”

Within the ecosystem, we're predominantly focused on three different types of investments. The first are AI native businesses. The second is pieces of infrastructure within the ecosystem that we not only do now think are going to be disrupted, but are ultimately going to benefit tremendously. And then the third is what we're doing in holdings, which is businesses that we think we can transform from an applied AI perspective. With regards to AI native businesses,

the way in which we think about it is, first and foremost, a generalized lab. And open AI is obviously

the leading consumer company and we've always believed that at the enterprise level there will be

somewhat of an oligopoly that exists at the hyperscale level. The second is domain-specific models. So the areas that we've predominantly focused on today have been robotics and the embodied intelligence worlds, drug development and life science. The third is the application layer.

“We've done very few investments or orientation around those is you need to be extremely specific”

with regards to what you're doing because we're living in this moment in which Apple has launched the iPhone and they don't know what applications they want to own versus what they're willing to let other people own. The things that give us confidence with regards to the businesses that we're partnered with are these ideas of reinforcement learning, memory within application to understand user preferences. The second category that I described in terms of pieces of infrastructure,

the assumption that one can make would be that would be businesses like Databricks, but things like stripe that need to kind of power a gentic commerce, what happens in a world in which identity becomes more confusing in an in-genetic world. So companies like ways become increasingly more important. So the third category that you listed there is holdings, but it's also a fantastic excuse to talk about one of my favorite topics from our discussions,

which is the building of sustainable competitive advantage in an investing firm that is mostly people in decisions. Let's talk about both those things, but starting with holdings. What is holdings? How do they start? What are you doing with it? And then we'll take it from there. One of my greatest insecurities with thrive is that we fundamentally look very different than the businesses that we try to invest in. As you look back at the history of finance,

there have been many innovations, but most of them have ultimately been arbed away. Henry Kravitz, Creative Private Equity firm, now there are thousands of them. Venture capital as an industry was nascent. Now it's not whether being Michael Melkin,

people copy. If I were to look back on some of the things that we've done to get thrived to this

“point, at the times that we've done them, they were perceived as deeply provocative. People”

made fun of us. People pass on us. But I would like for some of those things, ultimately over time, to enable us to create an element of true defense ability in a true mode. The things that striped data, open AI did, or SpaceX did, were seen as provocative, but ultimately their escape velocity enabled them to create true defense ability around the products. The North Star for the next decade of thrive is if we are a company and we have a product, what are the products that we can

create that make us look more like the businesses that we ultimately invest in. The second part of the story is after we invested in Open AI, the business had $50 million of API revenue and several of us went around New York City and started pitching a bunch of the private equity firms on this idea that they could use the API to create greater efficiency within their businesses. We were somewhat surprised by the fact that we did not get meaningful traction around these ideas.

So, Karim to his credits, let's just start doing this ourselves. We had always been very interested

in this idea of buying businesses, but the idea of creating greater efficiency within them from a technology-enabled perspective was not something that we could ever imagine and this was really the opportunity to do it. It's been really extraordinary to see the impact that we've been able to make because it could enable us to achieve our North Star of creating a differentiated cost of capital at scale. The North Star KPI for the holding company is to not just create

efficiency within these businesses, but really in many respects to think of these companies as product and technology companies. We've always looked at the world that we've lived in as one that needed to disrupt from an outside and perspective. If you're to think about the paradigm shift of reinforcement learning, the things that you need are both the data that is proprietary

“to the company, but also the experts that exist at the company to find tune the model. So, I think”

we are of the belief that on a go-forward basis disruption will happen from inside out. We set up this permanent capital vehicle that enables us to buy these businesses and hold them in perpetuity because if you actually have a differentiated unique lens and cost of capital around these businesses and you're able to transform them in the ways in which you want to. You ultimately want to hold on to them forever. One person I'm very grateful for that helped us create this structure as

Alex Salman from Long Lake. Alex is one of my best friends. We were doing this for quite some time, but his insights and perspectives around the actual structure that it should exist in is something that I'm enormously grateful for. I love the idea that the disruption because of data and internal know-how is happening inside out rather than outside in. That's a totally interesting different paradigm than in the past. How do you relate to competition? Back to the TL idea,

he would say, you don't want competition at all. The same way that space is accidentally I have competition for Starlink. There's just nothing else, and that's better than fighting everyone and trying to beat everyone all the time. VC adventure and private investing has massively

“proliferated since you started drive. How do you think about your quote-unquote competitors?”

We think about competition in probably more of a positive some capacity than others. We feel like we have a lot to learn from other firms. We have deep respect for a lot of other firms.

We always try our best to BS collaborative as possible. I view competition as a swim race.

When you are swimming, if you look to your left or if you look to your right, you're going to lose. You just need to look straight ahead. We are competing against ourselves most of the days that we are working and it's just fundamentally important that we don't look at anyone else in terms of how they're doing. We just have to swim as hard as we can in one direction and don't say of anything for the swim back. Nonetheless, sometimes you're in

your lane. Someone else comes in and they swim into the lane. There are competitive deals that you want to win. I'm sure that other great firms also want to win. How do you win when you

want to? The ethos of the firm is never so against anyone else. There are truly a lot of firms

that we respect deeply and we will never compare ourselves to anyone else. What we like to do is

These are the types of things that we can do for you. Other firms can do other things as well.

“But we try our best to make it about ourselves and what we can do as opposed to us versus anyone else”

and just give it to the entrepreneur for them ultimately decide. Your finance team isn't losing

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AI doesn't understand your process. Rogo does. It's an AI platform built specifically for Wall Street connected to your data, understanding your process and producing real outputs. Check them out at rogo.au/invest. The best AI and software companies from Open AI to cursor to perplexity use WorkOS to become enterprise ready overnight, not in months. Visit workos.com to skip the unglamorous infrastructure work and focus on your product. Ridgeline is redefining

asset management technology as a true partner, not just a software vendor. They've helped firms 5x in scale enabling faster growth, smarter operations and a competitive edge. Visit RidgelineApps.com to see what they can unlock for your firm. Tell me about loyalty as a concept. It's been very hard at times to see people act in ways that don't necessarily resonate with the ethics and values of thrive. As I've expressed to you, sometimes before

perhaps thrive will be less successful because we're not willing to do the things that other people are willing to do, but it depends on how you define success. We really try our best to be positive some but also the same time. If you're on our team, you're on our team and if you decide not to be on our team, that's fine as well. What's something you'd be unwilling to do that you've seen others willing to do? It's an example of that. I believe that my word, the word of the firm,

is more important than anything else. If I commit to someone that I'm going to be by their side,

I'm going to be by their side. We don't invest in competitive businesses. I've always fundamentally

“believe that that notion is more important than whatever the ultimate trade is. I think it's important”

that we always think about the industry and a positive sum capacity, but also the same time. I think it's fundamentally important that we also hold our ground and aligned that I've used to the team before is kindness without toughness, faulters and toughness without kindness, crowds. Do you think of the words that could be used to describe you that for rocious is a fair one? There's a lot of passion in what we do every day and we want to be the best that we possibly can.

Define it however you want. Trust is something I'm always interested in. Is it become harder or easier for you to trust people with your success? I don't think we've achieved much, but I'm a trust by default person, but if someone breaks that trust throughout, let's especially build it. I really believe in humanity. I really believe that people were

created to be good. People can grow. People can always aspire to be better, so I think seeing people

“for who they are in the best versions of themselves is the best way to build it and to be honest”

and to live your life in a certain way, the only way to create trust with someone is to be trustworthy to make sure that they know where you stand on something that doesn't mean we're not all human that we don't all make mistakes, but I think that's the way in which I've gone about it. You just had a daughter whose name is Ray, Ray was your grandma's name and your grandma, I did not fully appreciate until recently when I learned more about it, led an absolutely insane

life and story. Maybe you say a little bit about her significance in your life and the significance of that story in your life. My grandmother was a very special person to me. She was an absolute hero in my eyes. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to honor her with the name of our child. 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 Beltsky

church on their back. The thing that my grandmother provides the most for me is just perspective, which is nothing I will ever go through in life will be as hard as what she went through to see her family murdered, to escape in the way in which she did to live in the Polish Belirussian forest for years to live in a refugee camp for four years to have to start a new in this country. There's no amount of pain that I can ever experience that will ever amount to what she has and whenever there's

difficult situation that I face, I always try my best to put it into perspective. More importantly,

in a very humbling way, there's nothing I will ever accomplish in life that will be greater than what she pulled off. Most people would break in that situation. I'm very proud of what I've done, I thrive the personal life that I'm living and I hope she's looking down and is proud of me as well, but nothing I will ever do will equate to what she has accomplished. He said me an article about this rabbi, rabbi, tights in the continuation of that story where he served as a bridge

for people coming from Europe to America. What did you learn from him, his story and how it relates

to American dream? It seems to be a little bit of a subtext of both thrive and the company say

you back and the people you back. There was this group of people that I grew up with. They called them the Holocaust builders. This group of people came from nothing. They all started at the ground floor. My grandfather was a laborer on construction sites. They were just able to build lives for themselves. I feel so lucky because I grew up in and around these people. They are such a huge part of my

“childhood and that's why I think I'm so attracted to a lot of the people that work at thrive because”

they're similar stories. A lot of people at thrive have come from very humble beginnings and they have their own versions of the experience that I had. I don't know how I can teach what I experienced to my children but I'm very determined to try and express to them that what we have living in this extraordinary country is not something that we can ever take for granted. It's kind of wild to think about where things might go since you couldn't have imagined being in this specific situation

15 years ago or whatever, what 15 years hence might look like. What inspiration do you draw from people totally afield? I know you love Frank Ocean. I know you love the Beatles. I know you love James Torrell. I know you love all these fascinating artists and creators that would listen to this and it would sound like Greek to them. They don't know what that we're talking about. Yet they're people you respect and have been inspired by. Whether it's that list or others that come to mind

who else inspires you thinking ahead to the next 15 years. I don't know what will happen. I do

“know that if we're very output oriented, great things won't happen. And I think the reason why I”

take so much interest in some of these people that you mentioned is because they're creating art, Frank Ocean is inspiration for me because he hasn't created an album in 13 years. And if there's nothing for us to create, then we won't create. But if there's something really extraordinary for us to create, we'll make sure that there's deep intentionality around it. The thing that I love about the Beatles is we have a really special team. We love working with each other. All of the Beatles

as music was created by a small subset of people over seven year period of time. There's some these songs that we know every word to like hate you that we're only performed live once. The group that we have a thrive. Our ambition is just to make great art together for as long as we're able to. I was walking through Jackson Square a couple days ago in San Francisco, which got me thinking about Johnny Ives. What have you learned from Johnny? Every detail matters. And something that I've

prided myself and something that I'm proud of the firm is it's just not what you do. It's how you do

“it. It's important to take into account how you make people feel when you do certain things,”

when you create things for the world. He's been an incredible role model for me in terms of the

things that we put out into the world, the things that we create, the things that we're part of have to have deep alignment with our values. I heard this really cool idea once that a product is how the person feels when the job is done. Johnny maybe the all-time great at that feeling. I'd love to close

is found in head in your office. What about that book? Speak to you and capture your imagination.

“I think it is just an incredible portrayal of the world. People who do for themselves, people who do”

for others, the concept of individuality versus collectivism, while the view of hard work is somewhat unrealistic. He's just so deeply committed to his craft and doing things in the way in which makes sense to him. One of my favorite parts of the book is when he's on trial,

he's asked to defend himself and he refuses to. He is just totally unwilling to compromise as

values. That is something to aspire to. For my 40th birthday, my brother bought me an original

“copy of the book and it's one of my most important possessions. To finish off this great conversation,”

can you tell me the story of your watch? 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. I had a really wonderful time with my college room 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 has opened 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. He looked at it and he handed it”

back and he drove away. I'll never wear another watch. Josh, so much fun to do this with you.

I'm very grateful to you, Bachelor. Thanks for your time. Thank you. You know how small advantages compound over time that's true in investing and just as true in how you run your company. Your spending system is your capital allocation strategy. Ramp makes it smarter by default. Better data, better decisions, better economics over time. See how at ramp.com/invest. As your business grows, vantascales with you.

Automating compliance and giving you a single source of truth for security and risk. Learn more at vant.com/invest. Rigeline is redefining asset management technology as a true partner, not just a software vendor. They've helped firms 5x in scale enabling faster growth, smarter operations and a competitive edge. Visit rigelineapps.com to see what they can unlock for you from. The best AI and software companies from open AI to cursor to perplexity use

work OS to become enterprise ready overnight, not in months. Visit workos.com to skip the unglamorous infrastructure work and focus on your product. Every investment firm is unique and generic AI doesn't understand your process. Rigo does. It's an AI platform built specifically for Wall Street connected to your data, understanding your process and producing real outputs. Check them out at rogo.au/invest.