Founder & Managing Partner, Thrive Capital
Search every verified Josh Kushner interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Joshua Kushner, founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital, has spoken about his firm's approach to hiring and investment. He said that when he started the firm at age 26, he chose to hire "young hungry" people willing to "run through walls" rather than experienced candidates, because he believed experienced talent would not want to work for someone his age. He described the firm's strategy as aggregating smart people from his own network and teaching them the firm's methods. Kushner also discussed his temperament during crises, stating that he is "calm and collected" and that his framing is "every problem has the solution" and there is "nothing you can gain from freaking out." Kushner has commented on Thrive Capital's investment philosophy, saying the firm aims to be unconstrained by stage or sector and to use a long-term time horizon as a competitive advantage. He noted that the firm invested in Zoom at its IPO because it believed the company was still early in its lifecycle. Regarding the healthcare industry, Kushner said that the U.S. healthcare system has "so much waste" and that health insurance companies have not prioritized consumers because they have historically focused on corporations. He stated that his co-founded health insurance company Oscar aims to create a consumer experience that he would want for himself, and that he hopes others will copy the model to raise the standard of care.
“I started the firm I was 26 years old. My line at the time was anyone who has experience that is talented will never want to work with a 26-year-old.”
“We ended up doing was just kind of aggregating the smartest people that we knew that were our ages — our close friends from college — people that they knew from different work experiences.”
“Instead of trying to hire the experienced person today we'd rather just find that young hungry person who's willing to run through walls like we were 10 years ago and teach them our way.”
“We have found that instead of trying to hire the experienced person today we'd rather just find that young hungry person ... and help them become the best versions of themselves.”
“My wife jokes with me all the time that I'm calm and collected at most times.”
“My framing is every problem has the solution and there's no hope at a better past — there's nothing you can gain from freaking out; you just have to look at the play on the field and do your best to kind of write things to where they ultimately should be.”
“I feel very grateful that we were able to play a small part, as others were, in that very specific moment, and we try our best to kind of do that for all the people that we're lucky enough to work with in moments of crisis.”
“We wanted to be a firm that built companies and invested in companies at any stage in any geography and in any sector.”
“And this was deeply controversial at the time because in 2011 when we raised our first institutional fund you were either an early stage founder or a later stage fund... you were either a consumer fund or a software fund you're either a US fund or European fund.”
“We are building stuff ourselves which really enables us to appreciate how hard it is to actually build... we are investing in early stage companies and as a result of us building those early stage companies actually want us to be their partners.”
“Technology is not just a niche asset class — it is this transformation across every industry... it's growing from just trying to build companies for a couple years to transforming industries over 10 years, sometimes decades.”
“These businesses are becoming much more complex — I think the investor needs to be much more multi-dimensional... as technology expands from just impacting other tech industries to innovating in healthcare and financial services it needs to be bigger from day one.”
“Just having a firm that's a very long-term lens — how do we use time horizon as a competitive advantage when we invest? If you're only focused on the stage ... you're going to bet on companies that have inflection points in six to 12 months and sometimes that's missing the most ambitious exciting companies.”
“Valuations of companies are multiples times earnings and we spend a lot of time really thinking about what are the earning power about businesses and the real core operating metrics... not for the next quarter, not even for the next year but over the next five years.”
“The distinction between private and public is a bit arbitrary and we just want to be in a position that we didn't feel constrained by whether a company was private or public to think about whether this is a really innovative technology in the early innings of transforming a space.”
'Hire people who will run through walls for you.' - Joshua Kushner, the visionary founder of Thrive Capital. With a $5B raise for ...
Joshua Kushner was just 26 years old when he founded Thrive Capital in 2011. Since then, his firm has backed some of the most ...
Joshua Kushner, Founder & Managing Partner, Thrive Capital and Kareem Zaki, General Partner, Thrive Capital discuss the VC outlook with Bloomberg's Sarah McBride at Bloomberg Invest.
Arianne Huffington and Joshua Kushner are exploring what it takes to be an entrepreneur from both ends - investment and entrepreneurship. Being both investor (Thrieve Capital) and entrepreneur (Oscar), Joshua is the ideal teammember for this ping pong session on the ying yang of start-ups. DLD (Digital-Life-Design) is a global network on innovation, digitization, science and culture which connects business, creative and social leaders, opinion-formers and influencers for crossover conversation and inspiration. Visit our Website: http://www.dld-conference.com/ Follow us on Twitter: / dldco…
Last week, we sat down with Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner to talk about his venture into the healthcare industry through the launch of Oscar. Kushner co-founded Oscar to take on the world of health insurance, and to actually create a better, more modern, consumer-friendly health insurance company. Kushner talks about how Oscar is changing the way consumers interact with the insurer through data mining, better customer service and more. Subscribe to TechCrunch today: http://bit.ly/18J0X2e
Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Joshua Kushner, co-founder of Vostu and founder of Thrive Capital, a startup investment fund, discusses ...
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