Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Josh Kushner
[00:00:00] S0: What's the best way to build it? [00:00:00] S1: 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, 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, and that we don't all make mistakes, but I think that's the way in which I've gone about it. [00:00:00] S0: You just had a daughter whose name is Rae. Rae 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 say a little bit about her significance in your life and the significance of that story in your life.
· Josh Kushner
[00:00:00] S1: 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 Bielski partisans. To come to America with my grandfather, and nothing with the exception of the shirts 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-Belarusian Forest for years, to live in a refugee camp for four years, to have to start anew 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 a 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 at 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.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Josh Kushner
[00:00:00] S0: You sent me an article about this rabbi, Rabbi Teitz. 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 the American dream? There seems to be a little bit of a subtext of both Thrive and the companies that you back and the people you back. [00:00:00] S1: 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 were 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 there are 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.
· Josh Kushner, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: 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 were 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 there are 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. [00:00:00] S0: 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 whenever – 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 Turrell. 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 the hell 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?
· Josh Kushner, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: 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 it takes so much interest in some of these people that you mentioned is because they're creating art. Frank Ocean is an 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’ music was created by a small subset of people over a seven-year period of time. There's some of these songs that we know every word to, like “Hey Jude,” that were only performed live once. The group that we have at Thrive, our ambition is just to make great art together for as long as we're able to. [00:00:00] S0: I was walking through Jackson Square a couple days ago in San Francisco, which got me thinking about Jony Ive. What have you learned from Jony?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Josh Kushner
[00:00:00] S0: I was walking through Jackson Square a couple days ago in San Francisco, which got me thinking about Jony Ive. What have you learned from Jony? [00:00:00] S1: Every detail matters. And something that I've prided myself on, and something that I'm proud of the firm is that “it's not just 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 a part of – have to have deep alignment with our values. [00:00:00] S0: I heard this really cool idea once that a product is how the person feels when the job is done. Jony may be the all-time great at that feeling. I'd love to close this second conversation of ours with a question about an influential book and a story. The book is “The Fountainhead,” in your office. What about that book speaks to you and captured your imagination?