· Jeremy Stern
[00:00:00] S1: That's right. So they're in the forest of, I think it's Belarus, what's now modern-day Belarus. And the story of "Inglourious Basterds," I think, is also partially inspired by this collective of concentration camp escapees run by this man named Tuvia Bielski, who basically, they live in the forest, and they train each other with small arms, and they conduct a lot of these kidnappings and reprisal killings of Nazi soldiers in Eastern Europe. And yeah, the Kushner grandmother was part of the Bielski partisans, which is amazing, right? So that was kind of, I'd already had this longstanding interest in the family, going back to even before I think they became nationally famous in the Trump era. I think this permeates a lot of the stuff I've written in the last couple years, but I'm also the Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors, and the idea of American national identity, it's the thing that allows all of us to be as Irish or as Sikh or as Korean as we want to be, right? You don't have to make any sacrifices to that part of your kind of sub-national identity, so long as you still subscribe to this idea of an American supra-tribe that transcends all of the others, which is basically a belief in the Constitution and individual liberty and freedom, and the values that all Americans kind of share in common. And so this thing is not like a kind of fairytale Disneyland story to me and my family. I think it's been very important for my whole life, and I think it's been fraying at the edges now for most of my adult life, and it's kind of coming unglued, and that has worried me a lot. And so part of what I've tried to do in a lot of these pieces I've written in the last couple of years is try to kind of check in with the current state of the American dream and try to figure out how live and true is it still, regardless of its various shortcomings and flaws, which we're all very familiar with. But is it still a live animating issue in America? Or as its various critics on the right and left like to say, it was always just a failure and a lie. And again, I think mining for evidence that it is still true and alive in business and technology at this particular moment in time is very fruitful.
· Jeremy Stern, David Senra
And I thought, given my own prior interest in the Kushner family already, and then given all of Josh's success now in the last decade plus, as a kind of new generation VC and one of the most important investors in a lot of the most important companies that- [00:00:00] S0: Don't tell him you called him a VC. He'll take offense to that. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, well, a lot of these VCs, I think- [00:00:00] S0: No, but listen- [00:00:00] S1: ... overcomplicate what they actually do.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: Me and you share this. In fact, hold on, I got to pull up one of my favorite quotes. I think you were being interviewed by Lulu, if I remember correctly. But you were talking about, because I thought it was interesting, why the hell your first piece... I think the first piece you write for Colossus is on Neil Mehta, right? Who's a friend. I just actually spent a few days with him last week. But you said something that was hilarious. You're like, "I had never really encountered technology investors much. I had always found the person I kind of annoying. As a class of people, they feel like they're full of shit." So I was asking around, who's the guy who's not full of shit? And that led you to Neil. But I would say, like- Josh has way wider and grander ambitions, and I've talked to him about this. And I don't consider him a VC. You can consider him an investor, but he really, he's a builder and a founder and everything else. And this is what I like so much about him is he kind of, what I think you picked up, pardon, you demonstrate in your piece rather, and I think this is what was fascinating is when it starts with the Rick Rubin, him going to visit Rick Rubin, essentially asking him, giving him a download of his thoughts, and like, "Am I crazy the way I'm thinking about this?" Is Josh kind of doesn't really care. Just like you're not searching for the people you profile to influence your work, you're like, "I'm looking out over here." I feel Josh is the same way. He's not looking around to other investors. He's looking around to other founders.
· Jeremy Stern, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: He is a good example of that. I think Neal too. Yeah, we have kind of entered this era of oversaturation of the public engagement of various venture capitalists who I think overestimate how interesting they are to other people. And, but we've gotten to this point where they're out there offering- [00:00:00] S0: That's actually really funny. I don't want to... Well, they overestimate how interesting they are to other people. I guess let me clarify what I'm trying to say here is like, I'm very curious how people think about themselves and their work, and the way it... We can all, like, oh, Jeremy's a writer or whatever the case is. I unsuccessfully was trying to get into, is there anything more there? How does it relate to your life? How does it change you and everything else? So, I think sitting down, you did this with the Zuck piece. And when I talked to him, I was just like, I don't know if... When I talked to Zuck, I was like, "I don't think he thinks of himself like a CEO." I got emperor vibes. And then six months later, out comes your piece where it's like, guy's essentially Augustus reincarnated. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: So that's what I mean by that. It's very fascinating. It doesn't mean you have to agree with their perception of what they're doing- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... but I think you should at least figure out how they view what it is that they're doing. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And I can just tell you, he damn sure does not think of himself as a venture capitalist.
· Jeremy Stern
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. I thought the interest, I think the reason that I wanted to start the piece with that anecdote about him kind of asking for advice from Rick Rubin, at that point in our interviews, I hadn't really figured out yet what the piece was going to be about. By that point, I really didn't have any intention of going through the entire family history first, which I ended up doing. But he was telling me about this time that he went to go see Rubin and the kind of crisis that he felt like, the personal crisis that Josh felt like he was having and why he sought out Rick Rubin in particular. And I was trying to get him to kind of recreate that morning and the scene and where they were and what was actually bothering him and what was the question that he was hoping Rubin would answer for him. And again, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something like the idea of Kushner felt like he had captured magic in a bottle in some way with Thrive. He's also built companies himself, but that he was kind of on a really good run. And he went to Rubin to basically ask, "What do I do if I lose the magic?" Right? "I'm afraid that it's going to escape me one day and I'm going to be without it, and things are going to fall apart." And I thought that was really interesting, and I sympathized with it, and I kind of recognized it immediately. I know the same thought occurs to all kinds of people, but at least in my mind, it was a very specifically Holocaust family type question, where the fear of everything you've built can be taken away from you overnight, and living in constant fear, even in America, that you'll be stripped of everything that you value and that you love and you'll have to go figure it out again somewhere else. I felt like that was a kind of particularly deep and vulnerable moment that he shared with me, and then that ended up kind of determining the rest of the piece. So one thing I really appreciate about Josh, more to your question, is that I think he does recognize, even if only in some ultimate sense, that things do eventually fall apart and you have to make the most of it while you can, and you also have to do everything you can do to make yourself invulnerable while you can.
· Jeremy Stern
Whereas I think a lot of other people in the space can often give the impression of they're on a rollercoaster and they're just having as much fun as they can while they can.