Kushioning the Blow

April 25, 2017

Jared Kushner, then 35, scored a big victory in November 2016, helping his father-in-law, Donald Trump, win the presidency. In the process, though, Jared had created a big mess for his younger brother, Josh, the founder of Thrive, a venture firm in New York City. In the weeks after Trump’s victory, Josh held more than 100 one-on-one meetings with his employees and two companies connected to Thrive. The Kushner brothers talked daily, and that worried some people. They feared that Josh, a liberal, would begin favoring Trump’s policy agenda. He insisted nothing would change. “Just as Jared is my family, I feel similarly responsible to everyone at my companies,” he said. The reassurances worked. “I haven’t yet seen an instance of anyone hesitating to take money from Josh because of the affiliation with his brother,” said Marc Andreessen, a Thrive investor. The fates of Jared and Josh have since flowed in opposite directions. Jared retreated to Florida following Trump’s 2020 defeat; Josh, 37, is newly a billionaire after a recent Goldman Sachs investment in Thrive valued it at over $3 billion. Who is the “other” brother now?