Why Josh Kushner likes to hire people with less than 4 years experience

Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner explained his recruitment strategy focusing on greener employees at the Fortune Global Forum.

Transcript

00:00So when I started the firm, I was 26 years old.

00:03And we were fortunate enough to be seeded by the Princeton Endowment.

00:08And they really believed in us and what we stood for in our approach and

00:12orientation.

00:13As we started to meet with other investors,

00:16people pushed us to kind of hire people with more experience.

00:19And my line at the time was, anyone who has experience that is talented

00:24will never want to work with a 26-year-old.

00:28So there's an adverse selection dynamic associated with the types of people that

00:33we could ultimately hire.

00:34So what we ended up doing was just kind of aggregating the smartest people

00:39that we knew that were our ages, our close friends from college,

00:42people that they knew from different work experiences.

00:46And I think if I were to orient back to kind of what has gotten us to

00:51where we are today, it's been driven by first principles thinking,

00:57humility, an incredible drive to do whatever is necessary to kind

01:03of understand different topics, be there for founders.

01:08And we have found that instead of trying to hire the experienced person today,

01:13we'd rather just find that young, hungry person who's willing to run through walls

01:18like we were ten years ago, and teach them our way, and help them grow, and

01:23help them become the best versions of themselves.