Sales calls · negotiations · partner talks

Grow the pie: the Kushner deal playbook

What Jared and Josh Kushner do in deals, turned into lines you can say on a call for the AI OS roll-ups. Each row: the moment in the call, the rule behind it, the sentence to say, and where it comes from.

"Five years from now, what has to happen for both of us to say, 'I'm glad we did this'?"

Jared Kushner

Real estate → White House → Affinity Partners

Ran the family real estate business. Learned partnership in the 2008 crash, when deals had to be reworked with lenders and partners.
White House: the Abraham Accords. Went around the formal channels and built direct, personal ties with leaders.
Affinity Partners: one of three buyers of Electronic Arts (~$55B) with Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia's PIF. Each brings its own money; JPMorgan lends ~$20B.
Brain Co: incubated with Elad Gil to put AI into big companies and governments.
His style: go into the details, talk to the people who disagree, be the partner you'd want, solve for every side.

Josh Kushner

Thrive Capital → Thrive Holdings

Thrive Capital: early in Instagram, GitHub, Stripe. Sam Altman's first call; led OpenAI's round at $157B (Oct 2024).
Few big bets, held long. Backs the founder first. Says capital is a commodity and trust is the business.
Thrive Holdings is your model, already running: buys accounting firms (Current, ex-Crete: 50+ firms, 2,000+ people) and IT firms (Shield: ~20). Puts its own engineers inside. Reported raise ~$2B at a $12B value.
Owners sell a majority and keep a minority stake. OpenAI researchers now embed in the portfolio companies.
His style: speed plus conviction, one decision maker, long hold, hire the hungriest.

The one idea from both: don't win this deal. Win the next ten. The seller, the operator, the investor and the broker should all be better off for working with you, because you will need every one of them again.

Lines for the call

Show:

The rule	Say this	Comes from

Josh's buy box, for each AI OS roll-up

Thrive Holdings picks industries that pass all four. Run every roll-up idea through the same four before you pitch it.

LargeBig enough total spend that ten firms is a start, not the whole market.

FragmentedThousands of small owners, no giant. That is where buying is cheap.

Mission-criticalClients can't stop paying: taxes, IT, compliance, HVAC.

Operationally complexLots of repeat human work that AI can take a third off, like Current's tax returns.

What not to copy

Don't use their names on calls. Jared is political; half your sellers will tune out. Use the rules, not the brand.
Their edge is partly access. Sovereign money (PIF) and Altman's phone are not a negotiating style. Your edge has to be the operator and the AI that really works.
Only say "we hold for the long run" if it's true. If the plan is an IPO or a sale in 5 years, say that. The five-year question only works if you're honest about year five.
Don't promise what's unproven. Thrive itself said off-the-shelf AI wasn't enough and brought OpenAI in. Promise the work, pay for results with earn-outs.

Sources. "Your notes" = your Apple Note "Jared Kushner book". The other lines are written for you, based on what the brothers said and did in public. They are not direct quotes.