Jared Kushner's Little Brother is Richer than Both Him And Trump. How?
The Tale of the Talented Josh Kushner
So, last week it was reported that Jared Kushner’s younger brother, Josh, 37, sold a stake in his venture firm, Thrive Capital, to a group of big-name investors, who paid $175 million; the deal valued Thrive at $5.3 billion - which makes Josh’s personal wealth worth $3.7 billion. It makes him richer than Donald Trump, whose net worth is estimated at $2.6 billion and also richer than his brother, Jared whose fund, Affinity is much smaller even after the Saudis, controversially, invested $2 billion in it.
Unlike Jared, Josh is known for hard work and “keeping his nose clean” and staying out of the press. Except in one regard: he’s married to the supermodel, Karlie Kloss. But, as supermodels go, Kloss is exceptional. She’s a highly successful entrepreneur, reportedly an extremely decent person, and the only gossipy thing known about her is that, perhaps, she does not see eye to eye politically with her sister-in-law, Ivanka Trump.
I phoned around Wall Street this week to ask about what people thought of the deal and valuation and the universal view was that Josh Kushner has hung onto good people and deserved his success. Although, It’s important to remember that a valuation of $5.3 billion, is only a paper valuation. “Instacart was at 40 billion a year ago and now it’s at nine. Nobody got out at 40,” said one senior investment. “Josh Kushner is so young, there’s plenty he’s never seen.”
Still, a few years ago I met Josh Kushner and I did find him thoughtful, ambitious and quietly impressive. He seemed authentic. I needed to look up my own 2019 book to remember the exact details of what I’d reported on him. Turns out his upward trajectory was long predicted.
An excerpt from my 2019 book, Kushner, Inc:
Josh, however, never quite fit into the homogenous world of his family. Out of respect for his mother, the youngest Kushner tried to remain an observant Jew—but he did not find it easy. He once broke his wrist playing basketball on Shabbat and was reprimanded by his parents: “This is what you get.” A former colleague observed that Josh would “sneak” onto his electronic devices to answer emails on Friday night and Saturday. He dealt with the embarrassment of his father’s imprisonment in a direct and easy manner. He once told a colleague casually: “If you read about it, I’m happy to give you more context.”
Josh is perceived to be more easygoing than his brother, not so pent-up or angry about the past. “People like dealing with him,” one of his mentors told me. Someone who has dealt with both brothers explained the difference between them: “Jared could be a little bit of a bully.… Josh is generally more open-minded to other points of view, particularly when you make a good argument for it, whereas I think Jared can be very, very narrow-minded.”
Jared’s mind-set was made quite apparent when, in 2012, Josh started dating the Victoria’s Secret model Karlie Kloss. When the Observer editor Aaron Gell mentioned it to Jared and offered his congratulations, “Jared said something like, ‘Don’t worry. The family is going to take care of that. We’re not veryhappy about him dating a shiksa. We’re hoping he’ll move on.’ He also said, ‘She’s not that smart,’ which I don’t think is true.”
Few who know him doubt Josh’s intelligence. While still an undergraduate at Harvard, he cofounded Vostu, a briefly profitable social gaming company. Then, while studying at Harvard Business School, he founded an early-stage venture capital firm, Thrive Capital. Joel Cutler, a mentor and fellow venture capitalist based in the Boston area, introduced him to Andrew Golden, who runs PRINCO, the Princeton Endowment fund. PRINCO invested in Thrive, and it expanded from there. Josh hired three partners, Chris Paik, Jared Weinstein, and Will Gaybrick; each had skill sets that complemented the others’. The money snowballed. Yale, Duke, Harvard, the Ford Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust all invested in the company. And Thrive got lucky. In April 2012, it joined a few other firms in a fifty-million-dollar funding round for Instagram. A few days later, Facebook purchased Instagram for one billion dollars, which doubled the value of Thrive’s investment. The company’s other investments include Warby Parker, Artsy, Spotify, Zola, Kickstarter, GitHub, and ClassPass.
As of October 2018, Thrive had $2.3 billion under management. “This is big-boy-type stuff,” said Jon Winkelried, one of Josh’s mentors and co–chief executive of TPG, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. The speed of Josh’s success was much discussed among Charlie’s friends. “I had heard when Josh started that he was going to make more money than everybody,” said Hammer.
For a time, Charlie kept an office open for Josh at 666 Fifth. The elder Kushner would sometimes eye it forlornly, but it remained empty as Josh excelled. It must have comforted Charlie a bit that ultimately Thrive took offices in the Puck Building, so Josh was at least in a Kushner building. George Gellert eventually took over the empty office at 666 Fifth that had been kept open for Josh.
Jared was intrigued by his brother’s success. The companies Josh invested in were helmed by some of the most creative minds in the tech industry: Daniel Ek of Spotify, Kevin Systrom of Instagram, and Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa of Warby Parker. In Thrive’s early days, Jared would show up once or twice a month at the Puck Building and sometimes sit in on the firm’s Monday meetings—which began to grate on some of the partners. They did not like him “swanning in and swanning out,” a former colleague told me. His visits gradually became less frequent.
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