· 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.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: You just did live what you do in your pieces. Listen to the Founders episode I just did on Mark Zuckerberg on your piece. I know it just came out today when we're recording this, so you haven't heard it yet. But I say in the episode, so we started with the Holocaust, then we went on this tangent, we started talking about it, and then you brought it right back around to the Holocaust where you forget where it started. You do this in writing that's really, really good, and you did it when you started with sitting with his parents, Zuckerberg, and then you go on a tangent, you go bring it back, and you close the loop on his parents. When he starts fighting, you forget that the scene that you laid out was, "We were fighting," and then you go into all these other details and you're fascinated. Then I was like, "Oh, shit." Then Jeremy brought us back to the fact that, no, we're in here. Why is this guy choosing to wake up every day and beat the shit out of people for two hours? It's a very fascinating thing the way you do that. I want to go back to the Rick Rubin thing because he came on this show, and what was also interesting is tied to what you and I were just talking about is like, how do people think about what they're doing? And it was like, "Oh, Rick Rubin's a producer. He's in the music business. He founded a record label." And he's like, "I just think of myself as a professional researcher. Every day I just get up and research intently about what I'm most interested in at that point. And sometimes it's music, sometimes it's podcasts, sometimes it's different people I'm talking about." He's like, "I'm just researching all day long."