Forbes: Trump's free-spirited brother Joshua's venture capital world

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Introduction: The new cover article of Forbes introduces the investment performance of the venture capital institution Thrive, founded by Joshua, the daughter of Trump's son-in-law Jared. Joshua is a liberal, disapproving of Trump’s values, overselling more than $1 billion in venture capital institutions, investing in Twitch, Warby Parker, GitHub, Spotify, Stripe, Slack, Instagram, etc. Outstanding startup company.

On November 8 last year, the world's attention turned to New York City, where two candidates were waiting for the US presidential election to be announced. Joshua Kushner, the founder of Thrive Capital, one of Manhattan's most popular people. Board the plane to San Francisco.

A few hours later, his brother, and his best friend Jared Kushner, will accompany his father-in-law Trump experience as the biggest political turn in American history. Joshua did not vote for Trump and was flying to the board meeting of the instant messaging startup Slack.

Joshua hopes that when the plane landed, Trump’s initial experimentation in politics will be his history of pursuing personal satisfaction. Before Trump was elected, Joshua had everything a 31-year-old ambitious young man might expect: a $1.5 billion venture capital firm that fought for the early days of betting on Instagram, a group of directly hatched High-profile startups, despite their appointments with supermodels, can still maintain a low-key life. "Trump Train" destroyed a lot of things Joshua had. The media and the paparazzi gossip about everything about Joshua, and Joshua found that he and the majority of people in the tech world couldn't get away with the proposal.

However, when Joshua crossed the continental United States, stared at the small TV on the back of the front seat, and connected to the Wi-Fi on the plane, the hope of a sigh of relief after landing disappeared. Hillary's elections fluctuated, hoping in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, then Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“I was surprised by the results,” Joshua said. “But it’s not as accidental as other passengers.”

So when Jared and his wife Ivanka celebrated the victory, the young venture capitalist was in a much more serious situation than before boarding. Many people think that the Trump team who ignores the facts is playing around, but now it is the White House, and Jared is a senior consultant.

Joshua was in a hurry. He said: "My life is guided by free values. I support political leaders whose values ​​are similar to me. This is not a secret. But neither party has a monopoly on truth and constructive thinking about the country. Open minds and learn from different perspectives. Very important."

In the following week, he talked with the company and two of the nearly 100 employees who are currently incubating startups. Everyone feels sad, disappointed, worried, angry. Joshua said that because Jared is my family, I feel responsible for everyone in the company. This sense of responsibility has also expanded to include companies. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield recalls: "Joshua told me, maybe every company, that I have no personal contact with the Trump administration, and I am not responsible for their actions. I can't let everyone get special attention from the government. Just treat me as someone else who invests in your company – it has nothing to do with the government, no matter how good or bad.”

Joshua also appease institutional investors and the technology community. The former provides funding, while the latter provides talent, and capital and talent are essential to any venture capital firm. The Trump administration’s immigration and visa regulations are particularly troublesome. Joshua friend and Box CEO Aaron Levie said that these policies affect the long-term success of a technology company; the technology industry has responded quickly and consistently because of the policy of the technology industry, employees, customers, the technology itself and the country The damage is too great.

But Joshua's biggest need to appease is Thrive's biggest bet on Oscar. In 2013, Joshua and others jointly established the medical insurance company Oscar around Obama's health care reform policy, raising a total of 720 million US dollars, valued at 2.7 billion US dollars - Trump repeatedly promised to abolish Obama's medical reform in the campaign. To this end, Joshua held a plenary meeting to discuss emergency plans with 450 employees.

On the occasion of Trump's 100-day New Deal, Joshua's situation can be further exacerbated. The Republican Party recently abolished and replaced Obama’s failed medical reform, which was Oscar’s victory on paper.

We now have an element in the same room, the Hollywood drama, which will be launched on the national stage: on the one hand, the younger brother, participating in the women’s march in Washington, and helping to lead the most outstanding startup team in the era of Obama’s medical reform; He either accepts or is unable to alleviate Bannon's worldview and assists the leaders in deciding to end the Obamacare era.

Joshua said that Jared and I still speak every day, but did not elaborate on their discussion and other family issues. The Kushner brothers belong to the most boring and unwilling to disclose information among the dazzling power brokers that have emerged. Jared did not want to accept the interview in this article, but responded to a plain email: "I learned from Joshua to start Thrive, and learned a lot from his investment ideas. Many of them I use at work, I Efforts are being made to introduce that kind of private sector innovation thinking more into the government."

However, the hard-working brothers can talk to Joshua. Although the 36-year-old Jared has become one of the most powerful people in the world, he has every opportunity to pacify. His father, Charles, handed over the family business to him, when he was arrested and imprisoned for illegal donations, tax avoidance and obstruction of witnesses. Then the father-in-law gave him the responsibility of the presidential campaign. During the campaign, he developed data actions and eventually made Trump into the White House.

Although Joshua is the heir to the multi-billion dollar family, he is a self-made man, giving up the comfortable position of a family real estate company and creating an independent, new career. Joshua has invested in some of the most prominent startups of the decade: Twitch, Warby Parker, GitHub, Spotify, Stripe, Slack, and Instagram. He personally co-founded or incubated five companies far beyond Oscar: Maple (prefabricated food), Capsule (online pharmacy), Cedar (patient accounting) and so on.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said that Joshua is committed to understanding the whole process and engaged in highly competitive transactions; he is a subversive entrepreneur whose business happens to be venture capital.

However, although he did nothing, he was burdened with all Trump burdens. And unlike Trump's business partners, Joshua has nothing to gain from Trump's presidency. In fact, the situation is even worse: Oscar, whose business relies on authorized personal health insurance purchases, is Trump's goal, his brother raised his gun and Trump tried to knock it down.

If Joshua feels natural in the loss control journey after the presidential election, it is because he did it through one stop and one stop. On a cold morning in March, on the eve of the blizzard in New York, Joshua walked out of the historic Phr Building in Thrive Capital for daily inspections.

First stop: Oscar. It took about 20 seconds to pass through the stairwell behind. Joshua was slender and black, and his eyes were red because of the laser surgery on the cornea that had just been moved. He and the CEO Mario Schlosser checked and greeted Joel Klein, former head of the New York City Middle School and current Oscar policy leader, and disappeared behind a security door.

Joshua appeared on another floor and spoke to his fast-growing commercial real estate platform, Cadre CEO Ryan Williams. Cadre exemplifies Joshua's complex career: he co-founded Cadre with Jared, allegedly getting financing from George Soros. After a fire door and a flight of stairs, Joshua returned to the Thrive office.

Joshua moved around like this place is his, because this is indeed his. His family real estate company bought the 131-year-old SoHo building in 1987. Joshua has transformed Puck into a comprehensive science park, and he is at the center of the technology park.

The Puck Building is one of the few links Joshua has with its family. Jared and Joshua (and two sisters Nicole and Dara) grew up in a wealthy environment in Livingston, New Jersey, from a Jewish day school to Harvard University, and planned to join the family company after graduation.

However, when Jared took over the family real estate empire, Joshua was still attending Harvard University and was deeply involved in the fever of Zuckerberg's Facebook. Joshua co-organized a series of startups (such as the student loan platform Unithrive and the Brazilian social gaming company Vostu). Reed Rayman, a room veteran of a private equity firm, said that no matter how late Joshua stayed up late the night before, he always got up before 7am to do his amateur project.

Joshua postponed his studies at Harvard Business School, working for one year in the Goldman Sachs Debt Department. After attending Harvard Business School in 2009, Joshua began to be interested in venture capital, giving up traditional summer internship opportunities and making angel investments in companies like Kickstarter and GroupMe.

Joshua’s parents did not know how his achievements were made. Joshua said that his mother thought he was only repairing computers in the first three years. But he got the attention of Joel Cutler, co-founder of General Catalyst Partners near Harvard University. Cutler persuaded Joshua to set up a fund. "I tell you that if they don't invest in Joshua, then they are crazy," Cutler said. "If this doesn't work, then I will invest in Joshua."

No such need is necessary. Using a $5 million investment from friends and family, Joshua established Thrive in 2010 and then received $40 million in investment from Princeton University and other endowments in 2011. He quickly made a smart decision to bet on Harry's, Warby Parker and Instagram. In the 2012 B-round auction of Instagram, Joshua’s Thrive competed with venture capital giants such as Sequoia Capital and Greylock. Instagram founder Histrum said that Joshua invested a lot of time in investing in Instagram a year ago. His relevance to Instagram and his strategic thinking are more important than other venture capital institutions. The deal valued Instagram for $500 million. A few days later, Facebook spent $1 billion to buy Facebook – twice as much as a week.

Cutler said: "That was a crucial moment, everyone rushed to invest in Instagram, but the founder said that Joshua should be included anyway."

The number of financing rounds is growing. In 2012, Thrive raised $150 million and raised $420 million in 2014. In the summer of 2016, a round of $715 million in financing increased Thrive's total ammunition to $1.5 billion. More importantly, Joshua achieved such a good result before giving investors a large return. Andy Golden, who runs the $22 billion donation fund at Princeton University, said: "We look at how the Thrive team sees transactions, analyzes transactions, wins deals, and their added value to entrepreneurs."

Thrive actively participates in the investment company, and airborne personnel help their talent recruitment, networking, product design and financial strategies. Eric Gundersen, a recent Mapco CEO who has raised $50 million from Thrive and other VCs, says these people are active, helping when you need it, and staying out when you don't need it. Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, added: "We are more of a colleague. Every venture capitalist tries to position itself as your partner and friend, but rarely in Parker. There is this feeling."

As shown by the five companies that Joshua directly helped set up, Thrive is also willing to build. Joshua said: "There are three ways to achieve returns. You can create something that others have not created. You can find something before others discover it, or use something that few people can use."

Oscar is Joshua's attempt to shake the conservative healthcare industry, using technology to achieve more efficient healthcare, replacing complex essays with a simple Instagram-style interface.

Joshua thought of this idea in 2012, when he had an ankle sprain and was trying to understand an insurance form. He and Vostu founder Schlosser discuss this issue. Schlosser is a data scientist who is also confused about the complex insurance claims process.

The Obama Plan of Affordable Care seems to be a great way to get into the market. They envision a high-tech, user-friendly product that will grow in the Obama Healthcare trading platform where people can choose a health care plan. Schlosser and former Microsoft employee Kevin Nazemi are responsible for product work, while Joshua and Thrive focus on marketing and branding.

Capital is the key. While Uber and Airbnbs are able to circumvent local laws and regulations, the health care sector is subject to strict state laws. Oscar must recruit industry workaholic teams to set aside a large amount of cash reserves in accordance with government regulations through a lengthy certification process.

Joshua has a wide network of contacts and a growing reputation, which helped him get $40 million in investments from General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund in 2013. A total of 30 million US dollars will be raised after one year. Then there were multiple rounds of financing of $80 million, $145 million and $33 million, followed by a $400 million investment by companies such as Google Capita and Fidelity International in February 2016, and a value of $2.7 billion for Thrive. Oscar investor, Breyer Capital's Breyer Capital, said Joshua is good at discovering big market opportunities.

The actual return of Thrive is more difficult than expected. It turns out that creating a smooth user experience is a simple task. It takes time and effort to build a medical insurance network, attract customers, and manage high-volume patients. Oscar lost $120 million in 2015 and lost $205 million in 2016. However, it is not only Oscar that is in a difficult position in personal health insurance transactions. Giants such as United Healthcare and Aetna are also actively giving up unprofitable areas. Oscar still has a lot of capital available, but with this year's registrations dropping from 140,000 to 105,000, it is clearly miscalculating the aggregate demand situation.

Like Obama's medical reform, both Joshua and Oscar lowered expectations. The company has withdrawn from the loss market, focusing on three major metropolitan areas: New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Although Oscar initially worked hard to build the largest healthcare network, it now works with hospital systems to share risks and price incentives to drive cost reductions.

Although Oscar said that Trump's abolition of the Obamacare reform bill was not good news, what happened in the past few weeks will not solve its problems. Oscar has been accustomed to adapting to the world without the Affordable Care Act and personal empowerment, launching an insurance product for small companies – with the hope that their dazzling technology will lead to big corporate transactions.

But the business community hates uncertainty. Oscar's prospects are now the most uncertain. (Compile / Ning Nan)

Editor in charge: Zhang Yujie SF107

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