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- [00:00]
Jackson Doll
If people were to look at your resume, they would infer that you are like a cold blooded killer. Basically.
- [00:05]
Jared Weinstein
I got to the White house in July of 02. So you get there, there's no kind of playing around. I mean, the stakes are high, but I think when the stakes are high and those leaders showed up with, we trust you to do the job we've hired you to do, I think I aspire for high stakes environments that are psychologically safe too. So on May 1, 2006, at like 7:04am, I remember my phone, it rings and it says, Oval Office. Karen Keller, who was the President's secretary, and she said, hey, you come down here. And So I walk 30ft down to the Oval Office and I pop in and say, hey, Karen, what do you need? She said, I don't need you. He does. He said, blake's going off to business school. What do you think about riding shotgun with me for the rest administration? And I said, let's do it. I had an incredibly rich experience. My desk was, you know, 10ft from the Oval Office. So I'm not sure I wanted to go be a junior lobbyist in town. I went to what is called analytics at Harvard. And I think there was four or five section and you're assigned to a section and you have an assigned seat. And I get to the section and I turned to the guy next to me and I said, hey, I'm Jared Weinstein. And he said, hey, I'm Josh Kushner. He's had a year of investment banking experience. I've had seven years of government. I'm like, of course we should start a venture capital firm. From like 1870s until kind of 1950s, Birmingham was like the next city or the city of the south in 15, 20 years. Places are changeable. And I think a lot about what tools can I use, from the nonprofit space to investing here in companies, to culture, cultural, but kind of attitude changes that don't make Birmingham try to be anything that it's not. It's not trying to be Austin. It's just trying to be a better Birmingham.
- [01:40]
Jackson Doll
Welcome to Dialectic Episode 44 with Jared Weinstein. Jared's work spans technology, business, government, investing and community impact. And he's made stops across Washington, D.C. where he was the personal aide to President Bush. San Francisco, where he worked early with the team at Palantir, and New York, where he spent over a decade and building the now legendary VC firm Thrive Capital. These days he's focused on Overton, where he's seeding new investment managers backing high conviction entrepreneurs and working with myriad folks shaping the future of Birmingham, Alabama, the place he grew up. You might guess from his resume that Jared is a very serious dude and I think he's certainly someone who rises to the occasion, especially in moments of crisis. I think anyone who knows Jared well, and I've been fortunate to have gotten to know him a bit over the past year, would tell you that he is just absolutely of humanity. He is an amplifier of people, whether it be the leader of the free world to the team and entrepreneurs he worked with at Thrive, to the investment managers he now backs to again, the people working on Birmingham. Whether it be early childhood development or place making or whatever it else it might be. Jared is a confidant, a friend, a supporter, an advisor and most importantly is focused on smoothing the curve of risk taking and helping people become their best self. This was a true honor. Jared has done very little press. I don't think he's done an interview and it was an honor, honor and privilege to go down to Birmingham and hear him tell his story. I hope you were inspired to be intentional and to think about the ways that you can contribute to the people you want to amplify the institutions and communities you are a part of and the way you can bring humanity into the work. You can find more at Dialectic fm. Jared Weinstein, the transcript, all the links and if you like the episode, please give it a thumbs up 5 stars or subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. Dialectic is presented by Notion. Jared is a collaborator through and through and so I think it's fitting that Dialectic's presenting partner, Notion, is a tool for how we think together. They recently launched a campaign around this idea and I think it's such a fitting frame for how we use software and increasingly how we use AI in the modern age in a way that isn't just about automating things, giving more individuals leverage, but specifically how we work together and do more together. Notion is a collaborative tool for your life's work and whether you're working with one or two collaborators or a large team, they have built a tool over the last decade that is an amazing place to collaborate. And now, thanks to Notion, AI and custom agents, AKA little guys who live in your workspace and help you, you can use and get the benefits of AI in a way that is actually aligned with doing the work you and your collaborators care most about and being able to automate away the busy work. If you don't use Notion or haven't checked it out in a while. You can learn more@notion.com dialectic and if you are using it for all kinds of interesting things, I would love for you to share it with me. With that said, here is my conversation with Jared Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein, we're here.
- [04:39]
Jared Weinstein
Mr. Dahl, thanks for coming.
- [04:41]
Jackson Doll
I'm so glad to be here down in in the Deep South. As you said, not my first time in Alabama, but first time in Birmingham. It's good to be here.
- [04:50]
Jared Weinstein
We're excited you're here. We need more Jackson Doll energy down here.
- [04:53]
Jackson Doll
It's an honor. We are going to go a bunch of places today. I'm going to start with, I think actually it's worth setting the context. You have spent your life across a bunch of different worlds, obviously starting here in Birmingham, going to dc, Silicon Valley, a lot of time, New York City, back to Birmingham. I also think if people were to look at your resume, you lie pretty low. We're changing that a little bit today. But if people were to look at your resume, they would infer that you are a cold blooded killer. Basically. Like you are somebody who like goes into situations and is operationally excellent and makes things happen. And I think the thing that they wouldn't see on the resume that almost anyone who has ever met you would say is that you are just like radiating warmth. And I think that's something that is kind of a funny, funny thing to look at. I also noticed your like log line on LinkedIn is founder advisor, friend. One of your former colleagues at Thrive said Jared is a friend in the truest sense. And so my first question is, what does it mean to be a friend?
- [06:03]
Jared Weinstein
Wow, that's really kind. What does it mean to be a friend? I think it means showing up. I think it means assuming the best of the other person. I think it means listening. I love listening. Frankly, I like listening a lot more than I like talking, which is why this is new for me. I like championing other people. I like seeing other people reach places that maybe they don't even realize they could reach. And if I can play a small role in helping them do that, that's really exciting. I get tons of energy from being around other people. And I also know, and for as long as I can remember, think about how much other people have played a role in supporting me and how good of friends they were to me along the way and whether they were peers or managers or whomever.
- [07:03]
Jackson Doll
There's a obviously related component, but it might not be totally obvious. There are a lot of people who are Incredibly warm. In their personal lives and in their professional lives, there's like a switch. And I don't mean to say like, I think again, as we'll, we'll talk about you, you certainly know how to get serious when things need to be serious. But you seem to bring a deep amount of humanity into work, whether it be again in the civic kind of political realm or in all the work you do here in Birmingham. It's certainly everyone you talk to at Thrive about Jared Weinstein. That is a common thread. And so I'm curious how you think about that. Maybe where that comes from. There are people who kind of cleanly separate these things.
- [07:49]
Jared Weinstein
Yep.
- [07:49]
Jackson Doll
And for you it seems to be a little bit more overlapped.
- [07:53]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, well, there were some pretty formative experiences early, which was being in the West Wing of the White House at 22 years old and at least our White House, led by President Bush, but also led by Chief of Staff Andy Card. It was an incredibly, of course, serious place and also a joyous place even in the most challenging of times. And I think President Bush recognized that you can have to take that job incredibly seriously. But you can do that with joy and you can do that with warmth. And frankly, you can get the best out of people if you have that kind of environment, a supportive environment, a challenging environment. And the White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, he was kind of a nice guy, finishes first kind of person. And that so set the culture for our White House. It was never about any one person. It wasn't even about President Bush. I mean, he was very much like, we're here for a very short time stewarding this office of the presidency that the American people, whether they voted for us or not, expect us to do. So you better bring your A game. And that's the President and the Vice President and Condi Rice and all these different people, but also 22 year old Jared Weinstein. And whatever you're supposed to do, bring your A game. And you can do that with compassion. I mean, President Bush had a great sense of humor, but he was in there at 6:30am, 6:45am and being like, man, we only have maybe four years, eight years to do this job, so we better be sprinting and we better be really intentional about what we're trying to do. And we can do it with friendship. And these are friendships that now, 20 years later, I'm still in touch with these people. They've touched me in amazing ways. They were great mentors to me. And so I think that's where I Learned it and I'm glad that my thrive colleagues got to experience and felt that.
- [09:57]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, it's interesting. I think there's a default like the XY axis of seriousness and camaraderie or whatever, family vibe or any of those types of even joy, to use your word. Those two things don't tend to be correlated. There's a certain kind of feeling that like, as things, as the stakes rise, like we all have to like become more robotic. Yeah, I shifted the other way.
- [10:23]
Jared Weinstein
I, I get it. I think there's cultures. I imagine a lot of my buddies who maybe started their career in the intense New York City hierarchy of banking, it was a taught behavior and it's not obvious to me that it works. I think it can in the short run get stuff out of you. It's probably like a dirty fuel kind of orientation. But in the long run, in kind of multi decade organizational and culture building, it doesn't feel like something that's going to be long term sustainable or long term excellence.
- [10:56]
Jackson Doll
Let's start with the beginning though. I'm curious. Like you're in college at Duke and you decide to work on a political campaign. I don't know if it was different then compared to today, but it doesn't seem like most smart, ambitious people are like jumping to go work on government. And so I'm curious and maybe it was slightly different on the campaign versus eventually going to actually work in the White House. But I'm curious, what drew you to that in the first place?
- [11:25]
Jared Weinstein
Sure. So I got to Duke in 1998 and I learned two things right away. One is there's a sport with a stick with a basket on the end that all the cool guys played, which was not a big sport in the Southeast. I also learned that in order to be successful in life, you left Duke and you worked for these two guys named Goldman and Sachs. And if you didn't work for them, like your life was kind of over. And I was willing to sign up for that. And I actually thought that I would need to go work for Goldman Sachs or somewhere like that after my junior year. But I was a public policy major and that required an internship to fulfill the major. And so I needed to get that done after my sophomore year. And I went to the intern coordinator and said, could I go work for the Bush campaign? Her face changed a little bit and said, I'm not totally sure why you would want to do that. She may have used different words and said, but yeah, if you get there, we'll give you credit for Your internship. And so I started, I think, in October of my sophomore year, cold calling down to Austin, Texas. I didn't know people, but something about him and what he was standing for just kind of spoke to me. I wasn't deeply involved in politics. I think there was an aspect of his career that had spanned both business sector prior to going to be governor, that whether he was Republican or Democrat at the time, like, that kind of career, I think interested me. And so I was a bit compelled by him. Austin, Texas, sounded like a fun place to go, maybe spend a little bit of time. And after eight months of cold calling, they rejected me once for an internship. They passed me to someone else. They finally called me kind of toward the end of my sophomore year. I got a call, and they said, hey, are you still looking for something to do this summer? And I was very prepared for an interview. It was much older than me, much easier than I thought it would be. And they said, when can you be here? And I said, I think I can be there in 48 hours and I'll
- [13:24]
Jackson Doll
drive overnight in a body, basically.
- [13:25]
Jared Weinstein
And I got there, I thought I would stuff envelopes for the summer and put up bumper stickers and yard signs and fortunately, think, really by chance, they put me into a really neat office on the campaign. Karl Rove, the president's kind of strategist, and I was the low man on the totem pole. And by the end of the summer, I was supposed to go abroad for my junior fall. And they said, we think you're doing a good job. Why don't you stick around? And I said, well, but I'm going abroad. Like, that's what I'm supposed to do.
- [13:54]
Jackson Doll
This is my plan.
- [13:54]
Jared Weinstein
And they kind of look at me like, you're an idiot, like you're working for the next president. Why don't you stick around? And so that led to the campaign and then continued on from there.
- [14:06]
Jackson Doll
Did it feel, in any way. Did it feel risky either on the dimension of just, I don't know, doing something slightly divergent and. Or related to the fact that it wasn't a sure thing, like. And obviously very much came down to the wire in the end?
- [14:23]
Jared Weinstein
It definitely came down to the wire. It did not feel risky. It became a little riskier after we won because I was going to go back to Duke for my junior spring, and some buddies on the campaign started to say, why don't you come to D.C. with us? And I was kind of like, what, drop out of school? Like, that feels a little riskier at Least at the time. And fortunately, my parents, who played such a role in my life, said, if this is what you want to do, we support you. And the fact that these authority figures said, that's okay. That's an okay path to go on. It still may have been risky, but at least I had this kind of, like, loving support to choose what I wanted to choose. Now, fortunately, one of the more compassionate acts and kind acts was Karl Rove called me and said, I hear you want to drop out of school and come to D.C. with us. And I said, yes, sir. And he said, jared, I knew a guy who dropped out of school for politics, and he couldn't get his bachelor's degree and he couldn't get his law degree. And by the grace of God, I'm where I am today. Go back to college and I promise I'll make sure you get up here when you graduate. And I think if I had gone up there, they would have given me, like, a courtesy job, probably in the, you know, I don't know, lead paint division of, you know, some department or something. But I waited. I went back to college. I didn't go to Goldman Sachs. I went up the next summer and interned in the west wing. Just before 9 11, I worked for Carl. I mean, I was the only intern in the West Wing, which was pretty exciting and special. And then when I graduated in 02, he helped, and they created an entry level job for me.
- [16:08]
Jackson Doll
What did your friends think, particularly when you were in school?
- [16:12]
Jared Weinstein
I don't think the George W. Bush fan club at Duke was that big, certainly during the campaign. 911 happened my senior year. So then people were kind of like, you know, his popularity went to whatever it was 80, 90% for that year. And I think people thought of things a little differently. But people were 21, 22 years old. They were doing their banking interviews and their consulting interviews. I don't think they could. I think they thought it was neat, but they couldn't really imagine it in any way. To your point earlier, there weren't a lot of people that pursued those careers.
- [16:49]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [16:50]
Jared Weinstein
They didn't know what it would look like. And I didn't even know what. Whether a job would come until almost the last week of college.
- [16:57]
Jackson Doll
Right. I also just think, like, I don't know, interning on a presidential campaign. One thing, interning in the White House when you're in college is kind of independent of the political party or whatever, like, kind of insane. Were you like, oh, my. Like, how did I get here?
- [17:11]
Jared Weinstein
Or did absolutely I mean, if you don't pinch yourself every day when you walk into the West Wing and through those gates, then you're probably in the wrong place.
- [17:19]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. You think more people should work in government? Aspire to.
- [17:23]
Jared Weinstein
Absolutely. I think that we have a really special thing here in our country. And it's not perfect. It hasn't been perfect ever. But we aspire for it to be great. And it has done a lot of amazing things. And I don't think that's necessarily kind of like predestined to continue. And it's kind of, I think the, the words like, for the people, by the people, of the people, kind of get, like, lost as this, like, no big. And there's a lot of countries, though, where it's not of the people. And so we actually have a pretty fortunate thing here. And what, what game have you played? What organization have you been a part of where if, you know, if you don't have the best people a part of it, you have a good chance of winning. And so I, you know, I think whichever president is in office, I hope that the best people who are passionate about and believe in that president's vision, go join in. I think I didn't agree with everything that President Obama did, but I thought it was great that he brought so many people into government. I think President Bush not only looked to people he knew from Texas, but people across the private sector. And so I think it's an amazing experience. People talk about working in mission aligned organizations and they talk about how, you know, their Silicon Valley startup is mission aligned. And I think that's true. But I mean, you haven't seen mission aligned until you've worked in something like government, maybe the nonprofit sector, and that's really special. And I think even if you do it for two, four, six years in the arc of a long career, I think you'll grow from the experience and I think the country benefits from it.
- [19:12]
Jackson Doll
You started to talk about it. Your first job, I think was working on effectively in like, scheduling.
- [19:18]
Jared Weinstein
Scheduling.
- [19:20]
Jackson Doll
When you found that out, how did you feel?
- [19:23]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, well, you know, it's not the thing that most draws most people to government. And I got a call of kind of a few weeks or so before graduation and they said, you know, Jared, we have a, we have an opportunity we want to talk to you about, like, oh, is it national security or economic policy or what's it going to be? And they said a scheduling office. And like, what scheduling office? Like, am I going to be responding to, you know, wedding and bar MITZVAH invitations from around the country. I think they knew what they were doing. And there's no more kind of precious resource at the White House than the President's time. I mean, there are so many issues that the President could be spending time on, but he needs to be spending time on the most important thing. And really, what the scheduling office is, is working to ensure that his very finite time is spent on the most important things. And so the way it worked is we would get all the requests from across the White House for the President's time, and then we'd work with the chief of staff. And so I very quickly got to see what was important. Not everyone at the White House really worked across his schedule. They'd work on their narrow issue. And I was seeing that, okay, we're putting this on the schedule or that on the schedule. And so you kind of see what the priority list is. You see maybe who has more power and relevancy at the White House based on getting things on the calendar. And so it was really helpful in learning kind of how the whole White House worked and what mattered. And really, the kind of. Probably the early days of my extent, I have this operational execution thing that you cited. I think that was very much the early days of it.
- [20:59]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, it's kind of an amazing way to get a bird's eye view from, like, the bottom.
- [21:04]
Jared Weinstein
Totally.
- [21:05]
Jackson Doll
Kind of. Yeah. In a way that might be unexpected. What do you think? Have you spent much time thinking about, like, what you did or what you showed when you were working on the campaign that not only had them excited to bring you back, but led to that seat to the extent they were thinking about what that seat meant?
- [21:30]
Jared Weinstein
Yes. And I feel so lucky to have had that experience and that they, you know, a few times asked me to take on a next role. And I don't know that I would have worked in any White. I don't know that I would have been the right fit for any President. I think part of it was
- [21:48]
Jackson Doll
I
- [21:48]
Jared Weinstein
was never the smartest kid growing up. I was smart enough. I think I was a very hard worker. And as early as the campaign, you know, I kind of knew and even had bosses that told me stories of how they had been the early person into the office. And so. So I knew I could work really hard. I never cared about President Bush. Would call it, like, peacocking, kind of like showing your own feathers. That was never interesting to me. And so I didn't need never to brag about my work or talk about my work either. Inside the campaign or to people out there. And so I think discretion certainly in a White House is pretty important. I think whatever judgment a young 22 year old can show around the job that they're tasked to do, I think I had pretty good judgment. There was a lot of balls to juggle, to say the least. And I think they felt I probably did that with a kindness, a compassion, but also a near zero failure rate, I think. And that led after a year and a half or so in the scheduling office to the President's Chief of Staff asking me to join him as his special assistant or kind of. And that is a fascinating role because the Chief of Staff is really almost the CEO of the White House in a way. And his job is to ensure the White House works in service of the President. And by the White House I mean everything from policy formulation to legislative strategy to the communication apparatus to, you know, the food staff, the floral shop, like the White House grounds, the Secret Service, the advance team, I think I was, had very much like a service orientation of no job too big, no job too small. Do it with discretion. And again, this Chief of staff was this nice Andy Card. Andy Card who enough good things can't be said about Andy. And also our second chief of Staff, Josh Bolton. Andy was treated the President and the janitor the same way. And Andy had worked in other White Houses, I think he had seen where internal politics didn't serve White Houses particularly well. And so he was very much a kind of one team, one dream chief of staff. He was very much a I'm here to make sure other people are successful. Maybe kind of like the first glue guy I experienced in many ways. And you know, he was first to the White House in the morning, so I had to beat him into the White House to be ready.
- [24:29]
Jackson Doll
What time did you show up?
- [24:30]
Jared Weinstein
I targeted 5am which was a. The alarm went off at 4:12am and someone asked me one time, like, why 4:12 at such a particular time? I said, well, 4:10 was too early. I got two more minutes of sleep and if I waited till 4:15, I wouldn't be there at 5. And Starbucks wasn't open. I had to stop at the 711 for a good 711 coffee.
- [24:54]
Jackson Doll
How much would you sleep?
- [24:55]
Jared Weinstein
My guess is I kind of like got in bed around 11:30 or so. 11 11:30 and kind of popped up.
- [25:05]
Jackson Doll
And Matthew Walker wasn't pleased with this strategy, right?
- [25:09]
Jared Weinstein
No, no, I sleep with 22 is for total. You're totally, totally do it when.
- [25:18]
Jackson Doll
At what point did. Because presumably you're Working on the campaign, that's one thing. You're an intern. Whatever. When did the, like, radical stakes and radical pressure first? Like, most people get paralyzed when there is high stakes, let alone crisis. Talk to anybody who spent time with you. And I think, like, one of the things they say is that Jared is a riser. I have to imagine a huge part of that was how you started your career. But I'm curious, like, what that was like initially and kind of like navigating that when you're 22 and just trying to succeed in your first job. But also there isn't room for failure. Right.
- [25:51]
Jared Weinstein
And. Right. There's other environments. Silicon Valley. Failure is the thing. Dc, you know, failure is not the thing. I think that I was so fortunate to just see a campaign especially that was focused, that was not finger pointing. That was, you know, campaign was. Was a tight race with. With Vice President Gore. Things came up during the campaign of, you know, crisis stories. Hey, we're going to deal with it, you know. And so I think I just saw these, I don't know, quote, adults in the room. I realized those adults may have been younger than I am now, but, like, they felt like the leaders of the campaign, and they were cool, calm and collected. I mean, President Bush surrounded himself with people who had been there. A lot of people in the campaign had been in previous White Houses, whether it was in his father's White House or other White Houses. And so it was, you know, we've kind of been there before. You know, act like you've been there before. A little bit. The night of the election in 2000, when Vice President Gore, you thought Florida had gone for him. You know, there were election parties happening. Hey, guys, we gotta stop this party. We gotta go back to campaign because the Florida is about to be in. And it was not chaos. It was, we've got a job to do. We're sending planes to Florida with lawyers, and, you know, it's like, okay, back to your desk. And it was as if, like it was another day of work. And the stakes were high. But. And I got to the White house in July of 02, so 9, 11 had already happened. And there were early, I guess, signals that, you know, the Afghanistan war was already in. In happening. And then Iraq was kind of on the horizon. Iraq, I think started in March of 03. So, I mean, you get there, there's no kind of playing around. I mean, the stakes are high, but I think when the stakes are high and those leaders showed up with, hey, we. We trust you to do the job we've hired you to do, they're kind. It's kind of, I don't know, like a psychologically safe environment while still having high stakes. And I think I aspire for high stakes environments that are psychologically safe too.
- [28:09]
Jackson Doll
What is you mentioned the White House Chief of Staff being like the CEO? I guess the assumption there is that the President is like the CEO of the government.
- [28:17]
Jared Weinstein
CEO of the government, you know, like chairman of the White House. I mean, the President can't, you know, he can't be so in the weeds operationally of everything the government does. The President doesn't decide what color to paint the, you know, Navy ships. He doesn't choose everything. And so I think in many ways the Chief of Staff's job is to ensure that the whole White House and the President is kind of like, teed up to make decisions at the right time. And so if the legislative session is starting in a few months, are you going through a policy debate process around certain issues and having the cadence of meeting such that the decision is made not too early to where it becomes stale and not too late, that it is kind of irrelevant? And so how do you ensure that whole thing works and the President puts the right people in place? I mean, he chooses the Chief of staff and he chooses his national Security advisor. And, and I think with the chief of staff, he, he's really looking for someone that makes the system work.
- [29:21]
Jackson Doll
Is the, like, to what extent is the White House as an organization like other companies or startups, is it part. Part of what maybe you were alluding to too is like, and maybe we'll get to this is like the President maybe in some sense, like, doesn't do that much. And what I mean by that is the President's job is almost explicitly, I would assume, like, judgment and people and like, if they were, if they're too in the weeds on anything.
- [29:51]
Jared Weinstein
You will never hear me say that the President doesn't do that much.
- [29:54]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, it's a ridiculous statement in some sense. I guess what I mean is like, I would imagine it's very, very costly. Anytime the President has to go into
- [30:05]
Jared Weinstein
the weeds, I think it's very costly for the President to spend time on anything other than the most important stuff. And there is a lot of important stuff out there. And it's not just stuff in America. The President doesn't get to choose, like pet issues, you know, like, oh, I want to do, you know, libraries, or I want to work on forests, like, maybe. But like the President, you know, it's not just American issues that get to his desk. Like the whole world is looking for what the President of the United States view or support or of any issue is. And so the White House has to decide. And I think the Chief of Staff plays a real important role of kind of are we spending our time on the right things and so, and giving him leverage, Giving him leverage. But the buck stops with him. I mean, the only two people voted on were him and the Vice President. And really, you know, it's the President. And so he has to make decisions. He, he was not a, like, let's throw people under the bus if things aren't going well, especially with staff. I mean, it was hard times, obviously. Like there were challenging times with foreign affairs and the wars. There were challenging times with his polls, I think more than the President had to remind us, like, don't focus on the polls. Don't focus on the editorial in the, you know, newspaper that is critiquing me written by a 26 year old op ed person. Like, that's not the most important thing. It's, it's, are we operating from principles? Are we operating and making the best decision possible with imperfect information and then executing on it?
- [31:46]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. You were working for the Chief of Staff, I think the second Chief of Staff, and then you got a call down to the White House, excuse me, down to the Oval Office. Can you tell me that story?
- [31:58]
Jared Weinstein
Sure. So I was the Chief of Staff's aide and I was kind of the backup to the President's aide who was and is and remains a great friend of mine. So if he was ever sick, I would fill in. So the President kind of knew me.
- [32:13]
Jackson Doll
And this is what, like two, three years in?
- [32:15]
Jared Weinstein
This is three years into being the Chief of Staff's aide and you needed a backup. I mean, the President had to keep going. If Blake, who was the President's aide at the time, got sick or needed help, you needed someone that could seamlessly drop in. And Blake was going off to business school. And so you knew that there was a new personal aid that was likely. And I think it was likely that I was potentially going to get the job. But the President needed to consider a range of people and what was best. And you understood that. And so on May 1, 2006, at like 7:04am, I remember my phone, it rings and it says kind of Oval Office, Karen Keller, who was the President's secretary, and she said, hey, can you come down here? And that was pretty normal because I would do tasks for them or go take stuff and so I walk the, you know, 30ft down to the Oval Office and I pop in and say, hey, Karen, what do you need? And she said, I don't need you. He does. And the next thing I hear is, Jared, get in here. And he's in there with chief of Staff. It had moved on to Josh Bolton at the time, and he was going through his morning papers and stuff and he said, you know, Blake's going off to business school. What do you think about riding shotgun with me for the rest administration? And I said, let's do it. And that was the end of the job interview and offer.
- [33:43]
Jackson Doll
How was that walk back to wherever you were going?
- [33:46]
Jared Weinstein
You got the tingles. I mean, it was, I think, I think as early back to the campaign of which at the time would have been six years prior to something about that job spoke to me. I mean, it could have been that the West Wing show and Charlie, who was this character that served on the show in this similar role. I mean, it was just. It just felt like. And I think it was the neatest job at 20 something could have. And I didn't call my parents a lot during the White House experience. I didn't want to be bragging and I think I was worried that if I shared too much with them, they would brag to people. But I think I sat with it for a little bit and then and called him and told him in that
- [34:30]
Jackson Doll
job, the White House, or excuse me, the President's aide sometimes called the body man. Like what actually is the job?
- [34:37]
Jared Weinstein
It's not really a J.D. it's kind of whatever makes sense for the President, for our president, for President Bush, it was deeply understand his day, deeply understand the kind of details of the day, the movement of the President. And I can walk through what a day look like and also understand his preferences. I mean, you wanted him always operating at his best. And that didn't just mean the biggest issues. It also means like, hey, from 6:45am when he gets into the Oval until he goes to bed, does he have the right information? Are the right people in there to brief him? You know, he is famous for being a punctual and bipunctual, I mean 15 minutes early kind of person. And so we were always keeping things moving. He never wanted to be briefed with too much information. Like, Jared, why are you telling me this? And at the same time he wanted. You needed to give him just the right information for him to be successful. Yes.
- [35:46]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. You're feeding this like incredibly high stakes, super complicated machine. And just like, trying to, like any, like, no, no speed bumps. Oh, gosh.
- [35:56]
Jared Weinstein
And as the personal aid you're trying to do this, you know, being that he. He would always remind you, you know, Jared, you're not the Secretary of State. You're not the, you know, like, you are kind of here to help all of us be successful. And really, like, within earshot, out of camera shot was a bit of our personal aid motto. You know, stay behind the scenes and make it work.
- [36:18]
Jackson Doll
How much do you sleep when you had that job? About the same.
- [36:20]
Jared Weinstein
About the same. I mean, I. I tried to get in by five and what that looked like was I would get a duplicate copy of his briefing, his nightly briefing binder and. Which meant his schedule, the briefing materials on his events, the memos that he would receive, whether those were policy time on tax policy or education policy, copies of his speeches, anything that he was receiving, I would get a duplicate copy mainly to just have with me if he needed it. I use that as a, you know, I would consume it every morning and I would start to think about, is this going to work for him? How was this day laid out? How was even the event laid out? Why did we do the press at the start of this meeting versus the end of this meeting? Why is, you know, the super bowl champions are coming in. Why did we do this this way? Just very keep the flow, basically. Keep the flow. And, you know, if I was in sync with him, I would have fired off a bunch of emails in the morning asking people for clarification, maybe suggest testing changes. And then he would come in at 6:30 or so and start going through things. And he'd say, you know, Jared, why are we doing this event this way? And, you know, if I had nailed it, I would have been like, sir, actually, I saw that as well. You know, I'm going to work on a change, make sure it's, you know, and. And part of it was that, you know, so much of it was like he wanted to be considerate of others. I think everyone kind of tries to, like, do whatever the president wants, but he doesn't want people waiting in line for an hour. He doesn't want people, you know, you know, so how do you make it such that their experience at the White House is not, oh my gosh, we're here to kind of make the president happy. The president was welcoming people to the White House, but that was what a morning looked like. At 8am The CIA briefers would come in. He'd do a briefing for that. Then maybe An FBI briefing, then kind of a news communication briefing. And then it was 9:30. It's okay. The Prime Minister of this country is coming in and the press is going to do that. And he'd need to be briefed for five minutes before that. And then after that I'd say, sir, the, it's time to go. We need to go over and you know, see future farmers of America are here for you to speak to for five minutes and take a photo. Then we're going to go down and have lunch, you know, with economic policy leaders and then we're going to fly to Michigan and I'll make sure the helicopter lands on the South Lawn at just the right time so that it doesn't disturb things.
- [38:36]
Jackson Doll
And you're like the primary interface for all of the things happening basically at
- [38:40]
Jared Weinstein
a very operational level.
- [38:42]
Jackson Doll
Right.
- [38:42]
Jared Weinstein
You know, like just. And, and you'd say to, you know, Secretary Rice, he's gotten the information you've passed on because she's have her own schedule. Or the chief of staff would say, hey, have we told him about this yet? And it was the other staff in the Oval Office, his secretary, and we were basically just making the minute by minute operations and logistics happen.
- [39:05]
Jackson Doll
How much time do you spend together? I mean, I guess it's in these 10 second spurs sometimes, but you're basically just with him the entire day.
- [39:13]
Jared Weinstein
Unfortunately for him, he had to spend a lot of time with me. You, he, you, you don't sit in every meeting. When he would go into a meeting, I would make sure it was working and he had what he needed and the right people were in the room. And then I would go out and be thinking about the next meeting or getting the press ready to come into that meeting. So most of the waking hours, you know, but then he would leave usually to go back to the residence by late afternoon. He'd maybe get a workout in, start working again on the next day's materials. He'd call over for stuff every now and then I had to wake him up in the middle of the night to sign a bill before midnight or get something done. That's not the most fun part of the job.
- [39:58]
Jackson Doll
How much consistency? I guess I'm curious how much consistency and structure there is to the President's time versus just like reacting to. Obviously there are crazy things happen and then you're just reacting. But like, are most days relatively similar in terms of you're meeting the CIA guy and, and then it breaks if there's chaos or like, yeah, he's a,
- [40:22]
Jared Weinstein
I don't know what other White Houses operate. He was a very disciplined. You know, basically everything in five minute chunks was planned out throughout the day and he ate at the same time and the briefings in the morning were consistent. And you tried to plan out in a. You probably knew his schedule down to an event by event level, two to three months out or so. And you knew the themes. Like maybe a theme of a week could have been economic prosperity. So you're going to this factory in Ohio or Silicon Valley to talk about things. And so you knew the like themes. But I mean so many things show up in the world that you have to be prepared for and it's not even certainly there's the massive stuff, there's the 911 and there's the wars and there's the financial crisis, but even other stuff that just, you know, a Supreme Court justice passes away. So you've got to be ready to nominate a new Supreme Court justice or, you know, various, many, I don't want to call them crises because they don't feel like crises, but they're things that throw off your kind of planned schedule.
- [41:33]
Jackson Doll
You're very used to like divert.
- [41:35]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, totally.
- [41:36]
Jackson Doll
How many, how much of his, like maybe this is a dumb question but like how many decisions is he making in a day? Presumably all anybody ever wants is just like, what should we do? What should we do? What should we do? What should we do? Hopefully some of that's getting abstracted away.
- [41:56]
Jared Weinstein
I think he's making the big decisions. He's certainly making decisions on who's in his cabinet, who are not other kind of leadership roles across those agencies. They're recommending we want to put in this person as the undersecretary for this issue. Absolutely is responsible for the senior staff of the White House. But you don't want him making decisions and he didn't want making decisions that other people could make.
- [42:22]
Jackson Doll
There's also energy fatigue which is like you're doing these small things and then you have to.
- [42:26]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, but I don't think the Condi Rice's of the world, you know, incredibly impressive people want to be micromanaged either. Like he, you know, he wasn't going to be secretary of State, like that was her skill set. And Hank Paulson is that, you know, you wanted great people in there. But when it came to, okay, sir, we've got, our banks are failing, our financial markets are, you know, tail spinning. Here's a set of recommendations and got it. He wanted to create the environment that he got the best ideas and then Made the decision.
- [42:58]
Jackson Doll
In what ways did he model excellence and in what ways do you think he was a particularly good leader?
- [43:03]
Jared Weinstein
I readily admit that probably no other person other than my parents and grandparents have affected me more positively than George W. Bush. I'll come back to as a leader. But he is, he's a great father to, to his daughters. He's. It was really fun, frankly, watching him as a husband to Mrs. Bush. Their, their friendship and partnership and sense of humor between each other was. Was maybe I'll call it beautiful. He was a great friend. I thought it was really neat, I'm pretty sure. Like, he had dinner before he became president with the same friends that he had dinner with the day after he left the presidency. And he wasn't someone that needed to come to D.C. and care about being out of the restaurants. He kind of didn't sweat the small stuff and focused on the big things, which was his family for him, his faith, and certainly this incredible responsibility that was given as a leader. He was, I think, incredibly consistent. I knew what mattered to him. I knew what he was looking for. I knew what he wanted out of me and his. And others. And so you kind of knew what the bar was. There was no guessing, no ambiguity. No ambiguity. He was. It's funny because I recognize that his public speaking maybe wasn't always his strong suit, and I think that was really unfortunate because that's how so many people saw him. And that can lead you to make assumptions about intelligence or judgment or all this kind of stuff. And it's too bad. And I think as the White House staff, sometimes we put him in the wrong setup. Behind a podium, saying words, giving a long speech. If you ever see him in an environment where he's kind of a. Just a general free flowing fireside chat. I mean, not only everyone says, oh, he's funny, or I want to have a beer with him. Sure, it is fun to be with him, but he is incredibly wise and sharp. And Secretary Rice used to say, you know, I would get so prepared for my meetings with him, and I thought I would have every issue left and right, dissected and understood. And I'd come in and I'd tell him and he'd ask a question. And it was always, it was like, that's exactly the right question he should be asking at the right level. And so he's an incredibly acute question
- [45:48]
Jackson Doll
asker in a way that's like, intuitive
- [45:50]
Jared Weinstein
in a way that just gets to the heart of the issue. And it's kind of like that's the thing that really matters. And I think that was a skill that I saw, I really admired and it kind of, it also is really efficient. It doesn't waste a bunch of time talking about things that we don't need to be talking about. And to do that in a way that is still motivating and inspiring to incredibly smart people who are in those rooms who've now gone on to do amazing things in their career. So I think he is someone that people who worked for him only became fonder and fonder over time. It wasn't someone that, oh gosh, wow, I just want to work with them. And then you realize, I mean, no one's perfect. He's never claimed to be perfect. But you grew in admiration for him as you worked with him more based
- [46:39]
Jackson Doll
on your experience with him. Do you have a particularly and maybe just an experience inside? Do you have a model of what you think is important in a President that might be different from everyone kind of looking at it from the outside or even just like what leads to success and actually doing the job?
- [47:00]
Jared Weinstein
I think that, I think the culture of the White House really matters. I think that ensuring you have great people who can bring you their best recommendations and that you can have an environment, I mean in that Oval Office when the President, the Vice President, everyone, like that's an intimidating place. So can you ensure that you're getting,
- [47:23]
Jackson Doll
not getting like filtered.
- [47:25]
Jared Weinstein
Not getting filtered, not having people come in. Mr. President, you look great today. That's a beautiful tie. I mean like sycophantic behavior doesn't help the White House and doesn't help the President make the best decisions. And so I think that really matters. I think it's why as, as we were talking earlier, ensuring you get the best people willing to serve, if only for a short, short time really matters. It needs to be a well oiled machine because the President really, if the President is getting a decision that's like a 9010 obvious decision, like that's a bad use of the President's time. Like other people can make that decision, like cabinet secretaries, others. The President is really only getting the decisions that are like 50, 50 and that really smart people are, are making very good points on either way. And you just ultimately have to go with one.
- [48:15]
Jackson Doll
Wow. What do you think people get wrong about him?
- [48:20]
Jared Weinstein
I mean one, he's a, he's really like a heart led person. He is really compassionate. He's, he's a bit of a. So I'm a softy sometimes. He's a softy too I think people created this like, frat guy image of him. I think he was a guy that was really well liked by both the frat crowd and the, you know, more academic, nerdy crowd. Like, he's just, he, he loves people and he loves seeing the best in people. I think they think that, you know, again, as I said earlier, people are like, ah, like, what is, you know, what a nice guy. I really want to have a beer with him. And the have a beer with him comment, to me, always, it felt like it was signaling for, like, he's just like a funny guy to be around. And I think it misses again, how acute of a question asker. When it's business time, you snap into business time and it's not because it's in his best interest. It's like, Jared, this is the United States people like we're talking about here. This is serious. And so I don't think people fully appreciated that because ultimately our White House, which again, you can debate, and he talks often about, like, I'm gonna be long gone by the time they figure me out. And so I can't worry about the popularity thing, but you have to make really good decisions and he's responsible and put in place the apparatus to have the information to make all those decisions. And I think history will look fonder and fonder on him.
- [49:54]
Jackson Doll
Obviously related, maybe a similar answer. But I'm curious what you hope he is remembered for.
- [50:00]
Jared Weinstein
I think I. I hope he is remembered for, you know, kind of who he truly is. I think he's a deeply. He. He loves our country. He happened to be president at one of the kind of most unimaginable attacks in our homeland that really changed how we think about security and things coming to our shores. And it wasn't obvious on September 12th that another one wouldn't happen days later, months later, years later. And he protected us for a long time. I think that he really led with what he believed was in the best interest of their country. I think he motivated great people to come into government. I do think values matter in all of this. And he's a very values and principles oriented person. If he never chased popularity, I mean, he would say, if you're chasing popularity, it's fleeting. You're going to chase your tail and it's going to change with the wind. And so you've got to have a set of principles that you follow.
- [51:08]
Jackson Doll
There were a couple other people you had mentioned being influential on you while you were in the White House. Kaplan, Dina Powell, Kevin Warsh. I'm curious. Any things that come to mind about those people or other folks.
- [51:20]
Jared Weinstein
You know, at its best, the White House does attract the best and the brightest. I don't know how I kind of like slipped through the cracks. But, you know, there were people 5, 10, 15 years older than me, separate from the president that were around. And, you know, Joel Kaplan was kind of deputy White House chief of staff and Dina Powell was first in the White House and then went over the State Department. I mean, two of them are top leaders at Meta now. Kevin Warsh, who's now nominated to lead the Fed, Whip smart. And also, Jared, let me teach you about this. And so to get to kind of watch these people, I think when you talk about the president, that feels so far away. He's decades older than you. But to have people who are five to 10 years where you could somehow see a path in what they did very recently and to get to model your behaviors at a young age in your career, I mean, what a total amazing experience.
- [52:22]
Jackson Doll
You mentioned there are some people who, maybe I misunderstood this, are staff who stay in the White House through every administration. What is that? Who are those people?
- [52:33]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, it's actually the majority of not only the White House staff, but government broadly. I mean, there's amazing people who've committed their careers to helping government work. And that can be. Secret Service doesn't change with administrations. A lot of national security people don't change. I mean, you don't want like, oh, the people providing you information on what's going on in North Korea or kind of like political. You add political leadership or. And that comes and goes. But you want people who, again, it is an organization, it is a machine, it is a company and that needs to keep working. And so I've been back there a few times since, and I'll sometimes see people that, again, Secret Service or other people, and they're like, what are you doing? It's great to see you. What are you doing back here? And it's kind of a really nice thing that despite administration's, there is a set of people that are keeping the machine kind of going as new leaders come in.
- [53:36]
Jackson Doll
You mentioned the word political. People outside of politics use political with a negative connotation. I'm curious, particularly maybe in the context of since the White House, you've mostly been in the business world to what extent that word can be positive. Is there a time when being political in business is useful?
- [54:02]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. Well, it's funny, people said you think you'll go back to politics or something. And I Didn't feel like. I felt politics was like the campaign. That feels like politics in a narrow sense. Sure. Sports team, government service. There's politics around it, and there's certainly a Capitol Hill of debating bills and Republicans versus Democrats. But, you know, especially, you know, the White House and the issues that we had, that felt like government service. And I think politics kind of gets laid over that. But it's not really what you're thinking about when you're there. I think on the campaign you're thinking about, you know, how do we win these votes, what are the poll number set polls? Like, that feels like more politics. And I think that it probably pushes people away. Cause they think it's all about that. And I'm not naive. I mean, that is in many ways the sport of aspects of D.C. and we see that on the news as much as we see anything else. But there is a ton of work day to day. And the majority of the work that is not service. It's like the workings of government. And whether that's the National Park Service or the embassy in Tanzania or the energy overseeing of nuclear facilities, I mean, that's like, like government service. That's not like politics. And so I spent a number of months on the campaign and then I spent years in White House in service.
- [55:28]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. From the outside, looking at. It does feel that things feel more political across the board today.
- [55:36]
Jared Weinstein
Yes.
- [55:38]
Jackson Doll
And it's. It's like, I don't know, you always want me a little careful of being like this current time is different. Like. But it. Yeah, it does feel that, that. I don't know. I wonder if the pendulum.
- [55:49]
Jared Weinstein
I mean, I think there's. Does feel concerning that. You know, it feels like our districts are either getting more red or more blue and there's less meeting in the middle coordination. It feels like it is more zero sum and it feels more of kind of like attacking the person kind of orientation. I mean, there's a really neat experience I had towards the end of the time in the White House when Tony Blair, Prime Minister Blair, was visiting the White House and he was. The president was busy with some meetings and he said, jared, go check on Prime Minister Blair, see if he needs anything. And I just thought I'd like go get him a water or coffee. I didn't really know. And I walked out there and he said, why don't you sit down? I was like, oh my gosh, what is about to happen here? And we're talking. And he was near the end of his career and I asked him what's changed since he got into service politics and now. And his immediate answer was that it used to be very much about like debating ideas and certainly over there there's a lot of debate that's part of their system. And he really felt like it had moved to kind of more ad hominem attacks on the person. And it feels like that's a really. That's the easier game to play. And in some ways I guess all of us allow that on X and the new it's like that's easier to play. It's harder to kind of debate the ideas. But that's actually what matters.
- [57:13]
Jackson Doll
Totally.
- [57:14]
Jared Weinstein
And it.
- [57:14]
Jackson Doll
And that also easier to root for a person than an idea.
- [57:17]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [57:19]
Jackson Doll
It's like lower hanging fruit.
- [57:20]
Jared Weinstein
Lower hanging fruit. And I think that's also why probably a lot of good people are like why do I want to sign up for that? I don't need to go have a bunch of arrows thrown at me.
- [57:30]
Jackson Doll
What do you think DC does really well compared particularly to Silicon Valley in New York.
- [57:34]
Jared Weinstein
People may chuckle at this company. I left less cynical than I arrived. And I think D.C. you can look from the outside and feel pretty cynical about it. There are some incredible, I mean we talked about the career people in government, I mean deeply committed to doing a job for our country. I think people are really trying to get to the right answer. I actually believe that even at the most highest political level, I think the system, unfortunately it does kind of move you to horse trade and negotiations and so it's not great. I think that it is really mission aligned. I think the other markets that I've lived in, like there's ambition in New York and excitement and there's certainly a future looking frontier in Silicon Valley. But mission alignment is real in dc.
- [58:31]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, people would say that Silicon Valley is super mission aligned. But you've made that comment twice now that there's a different weight maybe to the.
- [58:40]
Jared Weinstein
I do think that there are that great organizations in Silicon Valley have missions to them and I think that is a positive force. In my time with Palantir, I saw what was a very hard software data integration analytics. But I think that company did help remind people that despite that work there was like an exciting mission behind it. But I just think it's a different level. And by the way, at the time Silicon Valley that I was in government and then left for the west coast, the connectivity between Silicon Valley and D.C. it was like speaking different languages. Whereas now obviously there's increasing in an exciting way, there's more connectivity you worked
- [59:28]
Jackson Doll
for the president briefly post White House, and you decided to go to business school, correct? Before we get into where you decided to go, I guess I'm curious, like back to the theme of risk. What was going through your head at that point? What felt like the obvious choice? What was business school? Did it feel risky? Did it feel like you had to kind of go do something different?
- [59:52]
Jared Weinstein
So the President was very much a sprint to the finish kind of leader. And, you know, I. And a lot of us were committed. I mean, we had the financial crisis, we had wars going on. We were sprinting to January 20, 2009. And not only we were sprinting to the end, we were also really committed to setting up the White House for whomever became president, ultimately President Obama. So it was all hands on deck until the last day. And January 20th came. I was the last person in the Oval Office with him on January 20, 2009, when President Obama was getting inaugurated in. And we went up to Capitol Hill and then flew back to Texas that day, and everything was gone from Texas. All of the military trailers and the situation room down there. And it was like, I think I stayed in a motel that night versus what I would have stayed in when he was president. I mean, what was really fascinating is that that day that President Obama. And at 12 o' clock when he sworn in, you know, President Bush was president until 11:59. I was his personal aide. And right at 12:00 noon, my BlackBerry stopped working. It's like they just switch over to the new administration. So it was fascinating. And timing was really interesting because the next day, I almost think. I think the 21st and the 22nd, the, the business school notifications came out and it was almost kind of like your next chapter was starting.
- [61:24]
Jackson Doll
But notifications like admittance, Admittance. So you had already applied.
- [61:28]
Jared Weinstein
I had applied in the fall of 08. I actually remember I went into the President's cabin on Air Force One and said it was probably August or September and said, sir, I'm thinking about business school. And I think he kind of. He's like, yeah, you want me to write a recommendation for you? And I said, well, that if you're open to that, I'd be honored and would mean a lot.
- [61:46]
Jackson Doll
It probably helps.
- [61:47]
Jared Weinstein
It was nice. I mean, he wrote like three hand, a long handwritten note to both to the schools I applied to. But I also. It was really fascinating. I remember the experience. I said to him, and if you're open to it, I'd be happy to or honored to come to Dallas and help you build the post presidency. And he kind of was taken aback in this really kind and humble way, as if like he was like, you do that. And it was like for him, it was so obvious why someone would work at the White House in support of the President, but to go and work for him post presidency, it really, I think, I think that was my, that's how I took it of like, wow, if you're willing to come down there when I'm no longer president and help me in this new chapter for a bit, that'd be amazing. And so a lot. In addition to sprinting to the finish during the fall of 2008 and early days of 2009, we were also building his team down there. And I mentioned Blake Gottesman, his prior aide. He had gone off to business school and then actually came back to the White House for the last few months of the administration. And he and I teamed up to think about the Dallas office and his post presidency office. And so I was thinking about people in the White House that could come down there and people that the President probably knew or had seen around the White House but didn't know well. And I said, well, this person could be your assistant or this person could be your chief of staff or, you know, chief. And that was really fun. That was kind of my first org
- [63:19]
Jackson Doll
building experience in many ways.
- [63:21]
Jared Weinstein
And so it was really neat because we got to Dallas and he, he, he knew the President appreciated me, but he knew me as like his personal aide. And then we get to Dallas and like the, the Condi Rice's are gone and the Karl Roves and the Hank Paulsons and he's like, I got Jared, who's going to figure this out and Blake's going to figure this out. For me, it's like, gosh, like how the mighty have fallen. Like, you know, he has to rely on us, but we built a really good team down there. And we also started thinking about what this post presidency institute and life for him would be like. And you know, these presidents usually build libraries and stuff like that. And we actually hosted a session a month or two after he left office. A bunch of former advisors came down to talk about what could this Bush institute look like. And I remember one of his good friends kind of raised his hand and the President was in the room and people were talking about doing a think tank and all this kind of stuff. And his friend said, Mr. President, with all due respect, there's something about the George W. Bush think tank that doesn't really seem on brand for you. It's like the George W. Bush let's get something done tank. And I think that was. It was a joke in many ways, but it also was very much of like, how do you build something that is very much about doing things and not just putting out white papers? I mean, the president's not a white paper kind of guy. And so that was this incredible six months and a really new relationship that I developed with him. And I'm really glad I did it. And it changed, I think, my friendship with him. And then the summer of 09 came, and it was time to figure out business school.
- [65:00]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, like you had applied to business school before. What was the calculus on whether to kind of double down on D.C. i mean, when you applied to business school, were you thinking you would go back into politics? Like, how are you thinking about if
- [65:16]
Jared Weinstein
you think back to college? I was drawn to work for this president and see where this journey took me. But I think even what initially drew me to George W. Bush was that he had had a career in business before he went into service. And yes, it started in my 20s, but. But there were two other personal aides before me in the White House and they had all gone to business school. And president had gone to business school early in his career. And so I said I was less cynical about D.C. than when I arrived, but I still wasn't sure that that's where I wanted to spend my whole career. I had an incredibly rich experience. My desk was 10ft from the Oval Office. So I'm not sure I wanted to go be a junior lobbyist in town or go work on Capitol Hill at that point.
- [66:03]
Jackson Doll
Totally.
- [66:04]
Jared Weinstein
I. Maybe it would come back at some point, but I knew I wanted to do something different. I wanted to try the private sector. That's broad. I didn't know what that totally meant. I was a little nervous that the easy job for me in the private sector would have been like going to work for a chief of staff to some CEO at Facebook or Goldman Sachs or stuff like that. And that's right. Not really the direction. I didn't want to go do the same thing I had done for a private sector leader that felt maybe a little administrative or you know, to operate kind of too paper pushing. I mean, those are important jobs. And the. And the chief of staff role in the private sector certainly evolved. But I. So I didn't know. And I thought business school was an interesting way to arguably. I don't know if I'd say it wasn't a step back but it was a little bit of like a pause. And yes, you're in class, but you're getting so much is coming at you from incredibly impressive peers who have come from different industries and you get a chance to kind of like think about the landscape before you make your next move.
- [67:20]
Jackson Doll
It's also a little bit of like a structured sabbatical. Like, I'm sure on some level you were like, yes.
- [67:24]
Jared Weinstein
I mean, especially at Stanford, which is, I think there was a great line from a dean of Stanford, which is, I mean, you are out here in Silicon Valley, like, don't let school get in the way of getting an education. You know, unfortunately you go to class for 12, 15 hours a week. I was working 18 hour days, you know, in D.C. so you have plenty of time to go explore and soak up all that's in Silicon Valley.
- [67:47]
Jackson Doll
Were you feeling. How was your ego at that point kind of coming into like, presumably, I mean, one person's reaction to where you were coming from would have been like, I can do anything. I just literally work for the most important person in the world. Did you have a feeling of that? Were you more like, oh, I don't know anything about the business world.
- [68:07]
Jared Weinstein
I was the personal aide to the President. I don't know that I had like the, I could do anything kind of thing. I had the probably a little fear of there's a big world out there and I don't think I want to stay in the world that actually I'm pretty well suited for. After that experience, I want to do something else. I want it to be big and bold. I think probably what I most loved about the White House that I wanted to take elsewhere was that it was big and bold. And so I was looking for another stage that had that in it. And I yet. But I didn't yet know exactly what the stage was and I didn't know what the role would be.
- [68:41]
Jackson Doll
Why Stanford? In some sense it was like very far away from D.C. i suppose it
- [68:46]
Jared Weinstein
was far away from D.C. many peers had kind of done the White House to Harvard Business School and kind of maybe more of like an east coast path. And I think especially for the kid from Alabama, like, you know, people knew Harvard much more than maybe kind of like this out west path that did feel far. There was probably something of it. It was different. It had like a kind of less known aspect to where I grew up. It felt, it felt to stretch me a little more differently. I think Harvard's an amazing place and I have great relationships from people there. But but it felt more that Stanford was different. And in some ways, it just. When I went out there, I'm like, this feels right and wasn't always good. And maybe not at the time of, like, acting on the. It just feels right jump at it. But I'm. I'm glad I ultimately made the decision to go there. It was a. I got there and it was a very uncomfortable pair of pants at first that became my, like, favorite pair of pants because I. I was much more used to what I would call, like, east coast ambition.
- [69:54]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [69:55]
Jared Weinstein
And I think of east coast ambition as I'm on floor seven and I'm trying to get to floor 57, like the top office. Whereas west coast ambition felt to me like, I don't even want to be in that building. I want to build my own building. And that was very new to me. And within a few months of being at Stanford, I was like, whoa, this is a. This is new and different and is stretching me in a neat way.
- [70:18]
Jackson Doll
That's cool. That's a great metaphor. I'm just curious about, like, anything else, about the kind of culture of being in that world that. That has stuck in your mind.
- [70:26]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I mean, I. I do think, like, what real risk is when you get out there. I mean, people would say to me from back home or dc, like, oh, you're in. You're at Stanford. You know, all those startups, like, have you been to Google yet? And, like, to them, Google was a startup, you know, at that point, it was like a re. A public company. It felt like, you know, kind of. And out there, you know, people are like, Google's like, kind of like. I mean, it's like old empire. It's the empire. Like a startup is, you know, two guys in the garage working, you know, on Red Bull and Cheerios and, like, building the thing and. And seeing that normalized. I had never seen startups in that way and that kind of behavior. You know, it's pretty cool to be on your third startup and to have failed. And so, like, that's not a. That's not a failure out west. Total.
- [71:19]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, totally d. Ever.
- [71:21]
Jared Weinstein
That was a total new thing. I mean, even in New York, it feels like. Like, to be a failed hedge fund manager isn't a particularly champion thing.
- [71:28]
Jackson Doll
Right. What was. What drew you, or how did you kind of end up falling into the Palantir situation? And what was unique or special about those guys?
- [71:37]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I had a classmate, we became friends, a guy named Steve Laughlin, who's now an Excel partner He started a company called Relate IQ after business school. And I think he heard my story. I wasn't really talking a lot about the White House when I got to Stanford, but he said, like, there's some guys I think you would enjoy meeting. And this was in a month or so of getting out to Stanford. And we had a dinner with Joe Lonsdale and Sham Sankar. And I was like, man, I don't want to have anything to do with walking software through government. That's not interesting.
- [72:09]
Jackson Doll
That'll pigeonhole me almost.
- [72:10]
Jared Weinstein
That'll pigeonhole. I just left that for the sole reason of coming out here. And they said, well, come by the headquarters. Let us tell you what we're doing. And then they said, will you map DC for us? And I was like. I was like, guys, I may be the best person to do this within like, a half a mile radius of Palo Alto, but I'm not actually the best person. I've got a bunch of friends that probably would love to do this for you. So I introduced them to some people in D.C. that I thought could help national security. Congressional strategists, kind of lobbyist. And I think I forgot about it for a few months. And I. I think I ran into Sham somewhere in Palo Alto. And he's like, jared, those were incredibly helpful people. Like, you've got to come let us tell you more about what we do, and maybe there's something you could be helpful on. So I said, okay. And I went there. And it's right in downtown Palo Alto. The headquarters of Palantir were at the time, and they were telling me not only more what they were doing in government and national security, but. But early days of some private sector work. And I was like, this is pretty interesting. And the timing was interesting because all the Bush administration people have actually gone off into the private sector, and they were now in big banks or pharmaceutical companies or different companies. And I was like, well, maybe we could just go do kind of a here's what we do. Is this interesting to you? And it seems so obvious now, but the idea of upstart data analytics like that was not obvious. And it kind of got going. And Chom said, we really should give you a consulting contract. I was like, I don't need that. He's like, you can get stock options. And I was like, stock options? We didn't even have bonuses in government, let alone equity. So I didn't really know. I mean, I'm glad I took the stock options. And it was really neat because it was certainly like an engineering culture at its core. And that was totally new to me. I mean, I had not been around that world at all. And I certainly hadn't been around the. Like, this is messy and it doesn't work perfectly well. Like, there had been one government software project in my world at the White House and it was like, you know, 17 months of contractor and all this kind of stuff and Palantir building the stuff in days kind of stuff.
- [74:28]
Jackson Doll
Was there a. Was an element of like, this is like, how credible did you think, like Teal was involved? But maybe certainly not as high profile as he is now. Like, was there or you just kind of like, this is just like, I don't know, there are startups might as well help.
- [74:41]
Jared Weinstein
Like, it was. It was really interesting because we had. We were making some interesting progress and we would go to these banks and I teed up some conversations and then the banks and this was. We were doing some interesting work in the mortgage crisis times of helping bank of America and JP Morgan work through. I mean, they had gotten into those banks, Palantir had, through security because that's what they were known for. But security was a much smaller problem than their mortgage book. And if we could help with work on that. And, you know, I remember we went down to LA for a meeting with, I think it was Countrywide, which Bank of America owned. And it was some engineers that I was friends with and Sham and Carp. And then Michael Ovitz showed up on his way in, as always, you know, and I'm like, and Michael Ovitz is someone I admired since I was a kid. And so I was like, whoa, like, what is going on here? And. But I. It was. It was a little difficult to me because I didn't know how to assess.
- [75:42]
Jackson Doll
Right. You didn't have a bar.
- [75:43]
Jared Weinstein
I didn't have a bar.
- [75:44]
Jackson Doll
Right.
- [75:44]
Jared Weinstein
I thought the people, the people were incredibly sharp. There was a mission alignment. But it was also. I'm kind of like, am I selling or advocating for software? And like, is this stuff work? And you know, I think the messiness of it is more a feature of Silicon Valley often than I was. That was new for me to not have it be perfect day one.
- [76:06]
Jackson Doll
Totally. I suspect also very useful. Kind of like almost like crash course on just a bunch of things that would be gone to be useful for like understanding this world. We kind of skipped over it. But you, I believe you went to Harvard orientation, as I understand it, and you met somebody despite not going there.
- [76:22]
Jared Weinstein
That's true. I went to what is called analytics at Harvard, which is the pre class for non finance people. And so they get you up the curve with, oh, wow. Oh.
- [76:36]
Jackson Doll
So it's almost like a boot camp.
- [76:37]
Jared Weinstein
It's a boot camp and I go to analytics, and I think there was four or five sections, which is about 100 people. And you're assigned to a section, one of those five classrooms, and you have an assigned seat. And I get to the section and I turn to the guy next to me and I said, hey, I'm Jared Weinstein. And he said, hey, I'm Josh Kushner. And he said, what's your story? And I said, what's your story? And over a week, he became my buddy, my kind of friend at analytics. And at the end, he may have taken it a little personally. I said, I like you, you're great, but I'm going to go to Stanford. And I was like. And I think, you know, he had been a quick career in banking, a year or two at Goldman, and then had come to business school, and I was coming for government. I think we connected. I think we were both big dreamers a little bit. I mean, I think there, I could see his ambition at an early age. I think he had seen my experience. You know, there could have been something. I mean, we'd both come from, you know, like, Jewish immigrant families. Different stories. But.
- [77:43]
Jackson Doll
But.
- [77:43]
Jared Weinstein
But also just like, we liked each other a little bit. And. But I said, like, let's. I'm going to go to Stanford, you know, we'll keep in touch. And I had no idea what. I mean, he wasn't really doing venture investing at the time.
- [77:54]
Jackson Doll
Right.
- [77:55]
Jared Weinstein
And we kind of.
- [77:56]
Jackson Doll
He was super young. Right. He was like, 24.
- [77:58]
Jared Weinstein
He was 24. He was 24.
- [78:02]
Jackson Doll
In some sense, you were both kind of slightly abnormal in that you hadn't really worked in a real environment. And he, like, I.
- [78:09]
Jared Weinstein
Are you saying the White House wasn't a real environment?
- [78:12]
Jackson Doll
In some sense, yes. Like, it wasn't normal standard. Yeah. The president doesn't do anything. Did you guys stay in touch?
- [78:21]
Jared Weinstein
Initially, we did kind of texting, and then there was a totally. A serendipitous moment over the Christmas break or holiday break of that first year. I think I texted him. How was your year? How was your semester? Great. I'm in Miami. I'm in Miami. We happened to be, that night, the same restaurant with our families, which was
- [78:41]
Jackson Doll
a weird fate here.
- [78:42]
Jared Weinstein
So, so weird. And we kind of, hey, how you doing? And I think the next Summer, between our two years, I came to New York for his 25th birthday, and it was a paintball tournament. A lot of his friends that I still see, Chris Pack was there like 25 years old. I mean, like, none of this stuff was on the horizon, right? And second year of business school, probably halfway through, we were. We had, we did stay in touch and we had, I think, brunch in New York. And he said, what are you thinking about doing after school? And I had done a private equity job. I had thought about. I'd been doing a little bit of the Palantir stuff. I had almost gone to kind of do a, like a COO track at a hedge fund at Viking Global. And I was like, I was interested, but I didn't know. And we were kind of talking and he said, I'm thinking about building a venture capital firm. Would you ever want to partner with me and do that? And I was like, he's had a year of investment banking experience. I've had seven years of government. I'm like, of course we should start a venture capital firm. That's so obvious. But he had some good reasons for doing it. He made a really compelling case of the opportunity to build a firm in New York. We talked about how we complimented each other with experience. And, you know, I think maybe we didn't have any business starting a venture capital firm, but I don't think that is really the bar. It's like we wanted to do it and we were ambitious and excited about doing and passionate about doing it. And we stayed in touch over the next number of months. And he was talking about raising kind of this first institutional fund and ultimately said this would be an exciting thing to do.
- [80:29]
Jackson Doll
Sounds like you and Josh knew each other relatively well, but not that well. What was special to you about him and what do you think he knew other people at Harvard? Like, obviously you had some credibility or maybe a ton of credibility in a different world, given your past experience. But what, what do you think it was value wise or competence or ability wise that allowed you to. You guys hadn't worked together. Why was that the draw?
- [81:01]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. Well, I think that I was really drawn to Josh's curiosity. He talked a lot about why there was an opportunity to do a New York based, early stage venture capital firm. His excitement of Josh would talk about, this is the most change since the Industrial Revolution. And it's like, this is exciting. And he had made some early angel investments that were companies that you started to know about. And then you just think of the concept of a venture capital firm, which is, wow, we are going to go meet all day with people who are optimistic, ambitious, you think they can change the world, and you get to help them do that, not only with capital, but with advice and support. And that spoke to me, and we started to have LP conversations, and that looked like that was going to work out. And so I think I saw that he could set such a big ambition. He could bring other people along. He had other people. Chris was thinking about joining. Will Gabric, who's incredibly sharp, was joining. And so there was something. Both the excitement of it, the unknown of it was exciting to me. What he saw in me, you have to ask him. I think he saw someone that was understood from the White House experience. The hard work, the trust, the managing, juggling tons of balls, the ability to, like, build a real organization, which I. I'm. I'm. I'm so grateful we found each other and decided to do it, I think.
- [82:54]
Jackson Doll
I don't know how old Will is, but I. It was like, those guys were kind of kids. Like, was there an element of, like, oh, my gosh, am I. Am I doing. Am I getting in here with the rugrat? I mean, obviously you. Not like, you were. I think you were probably 30. Or were there other people in your life, like, who were like, this is what you're gonna go do?
- [83:12]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I think there were like, oh, that sounds cute. Start your own little venture capital firm
- [83:18]
Jackson Doll
also in New York, where there's more venture capital firms.
- [83:22]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I think there was a little of that. I think I ultimately had to, you know, trust my instincts. I took some time to think about it, and Palantir was interesting, and I did stay involved with them for a number of years. But thrive was exciting and it was fast. I mean, it was very different, obviously, than the White House, but between Chris and Will and Josh, I mean, I think all four of us, it's like, wow, this is a committed, smart, driven group of people. Let's see where this can go.
- [83:56]
Jackson Doll
It's interesting on the theme of risk, because in. In some sense, you could say that the White House is, like, the highest. And I realize, like, for a lot of reasons different, but, like, in some sense, the highest pedigree thing you could imagine doing, or at the very least, it is, like, consensusly, like a place to be. And this was, like, the exact opposite.
- [84:17]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, it was at the time. I mean, and certainly our brand was below the radar for a long time,
- [84:23]
Jackson Doll
too, but you didn't have any. Like, there's a thing of, like, after you've had a little bit of Success in your career. There's a little bit of, like, scarcity, I think that can be tempting to have, which is just like, wow, I don't really want to climb down from this local maximum. Like, correct. And I gotta parlay this thing into the next thing, lest I fall. And somehow you. And granted, it wasn't a straight line, but, like. And you had gone to business school and there's pals here, but, like, that was, in some sense, from the outside looking in, super, super risky or at the very least, taking a huge step down to try something.
- [84:59]
Jared Weinstein
It felt like a different step, not a step down. It felt. I mean, I do. I remember thinking, saying things like, gosh, I. Some ways I hit a grand slam with the White House. And my biggest fear is I don't know what the next it could be. Which was not knowing was. Was scary. I think that thrive. I've saw the potential in it. I mean, years in, we used to say, like, can you believe we got here? Or some people would say, like, can you believe this thing that was like, so small when y' all started? And in no way, like, it's like, yes, we wanted to build this. Like, did we have any business doing it? No. Did it take now 15 years? Yes. But at least we were aiming to do something really great and that was inspiring and worth trying.
- [85:47]
Jackson Doll
And do you know what you're aiming at? Like, was there a reference point? Would you guys, like, know about Sequoia Capital or whatever? And you were.
- [85:53]
Jared Weinstein
Yes, I think. And there were people, you know, there was Tiger Global, that what they had built was pretty inspiring in the kind of 2010 times, you know, I think where. I think what. One of the things we maybe got right was that we balanced ambition and doing something different with a ton of curiosity and admiration for those who had done it excellently before us. And so I was. I mean, I had come from zero, like, finance world and. And the only finance adjacency experience that had been at the White House in 2008 when it felt like, you know, Wall street was burning down, you know, everything. And so it was a little bit of skeptical curiosity as I dove into the world and started building Thrive. I was like a student of what people had done, and I would go and ask people if I could sit in on their Monday meetings or if. And the good thing was we were not a threat to anyone at the time. And we were also curious and wanted to partner and maybe write a small check along a Sequoia or Tiger. And I'm really grateful that so many people supported us along the way and let me learn from them. And, and really also to Josh's credit, it was that it is good to know those things and we can do things different. And I think we balanced out those dynamics of the firm really well.
- [87:23]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, it takes a certain, a certain kind of conviction and self knowledge to like, know where to toe that line. Why was New York important, being in New York?
- [87:32]
Jared Weinstein
I think that that was more of Josh believing that it was a market to start in. I think he knew the market there was. And Josh has seen a lot of things early and made good bets. And I think there was a feeling that there's this emerging ecosystem. And it was also exciting to see back when software was more of a category versus what it is now. There were these kind of, of traditional industries getting enabled by software. There's entertainment, there was fashion, there was healthcare. When we started Oscar, there was just. And so like, I think our core competency was perhaps to be a like, interesting way of thinking about enabling these traditional industries. And that was a, certainly for a while that was a theme that Thrive very much leaned into.
- [88:26]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. Yep. Aside from maybe a couple of things you just said and that group, which obviously I think in hindsight was quite special. Is there anything else you guys did? Maybe not quite right at the beginning, but early on, structurally, culturally fun setup, lp like anything that you think was really, in hindsight, like really, really important, even if it wasn't completely deliberate.
- [88:50]
Jared Weinstein
I think there were a number of things I. One, no one outworked Josh or me. So the two top leaders were not advanced in their career and thus kind of sitting back and letting other people do the work. And I think that was setting that goal, Setting that example was really important, I think. I refuse to ever use the word back office at Thrive. I never understood, understood that as like a finance term, that there's like a investing team and then there's the back office. It seems so demeaning to me. And at the White House we didn't have like the important people in the back office. Like, we needed excellence. And so I wanted us to have the best investors. Absolutely. But I wanted the best general counsel and I wanted the best CFO and I wanted the best receptionist. And I think bringing that intentionality to it, both of how we find great talent, but also at like a one team orientation was super important. I wanted the assistants, the executive assistants in the room as much as possible in the investment discussions, not because they would advance the discussion, but that they would then have better context of what we did and they could show up more. I mean, I think we had great custodial staff and wonderful man named Ramon who made our office great. And you could say there's that great NASA story of like President Kennedy walking through the halls of NASA and he runs into a janitor. And the guy asked him what's he doing here? And the janitor says, like, I'm working to put a man on the moon. It's like everyone plays a role in the mission. And I wanted that kind of culture there. I think that, I think Josh also always asks the kind of like, why do we have to do it this way? Like, Josh was always good at questioning things and I think, and also open to the answer of, well, this is why. And I think he trusted that I would drive that forward. Or also like, let's think differently about things.
- [90:54]
Jackson Doll
One of the things that maybe I alluded to earlier and it certainly comes up when you talk to some people about you, is your ability to work under pressure. I'm curious what it was like to go into another really high stakes environment, maybe post business school, but also like, maybe like, was it just that any crisis or stakes just felt tame compared to what you'd done before? It's just riding on that forever.
- [91:23]
Jared Weinstein
I think there, you know, there's some of our, you know, Thrive colleagues that would say, gosh, you know, like, you gotta see crisis Jared, crisis management Jared. And I'm just like, like, is, you know, is this person leaving? You know, when Will left for stripe? Like, is this really a crisis? Like doesn't feel like a crisis based on, you know, seeing what I saw at the White House. It's something different and unexpected that you have to manage. Yes. But going into kind of like panic mode never felt like the right strategy to effectively solve it. Or, you know, I don't know, something happens with a company or an lp, it's just, just, okay, let's get grounded in what actually is going on here and what's the next step and the step after that and the sun will come up tomorrow and let's go do something and kind of like a little bit of self trust of hey, we got here and things will like, let's get back to our values a little bit. Let's get back to. It's never as bad as it looks. So maybe sometimes I'm never as good as it looks either. And I try to stay level headed.
- [92:33]
Jackson Doll
Yeah.
- [92:35]
Jared Weinstein
But I'm, I'm glad my colleagues enjoyed seeing me in that.
- [92:39]
Jackson Doll
It's, it's Funny, it's almost like when you've experienced a certain kind of pain, like other pain, but you only like everyone's. The worst pain anyone's experienced to them is the worst possible. It's all relative.
- [92:53]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I mean when I got a call from the Situation room in like 2000, I don't know, six or seven and they said, you know, can you track down the chief of staff? Like the vice president has shot somebody on that like hunting trip. And I was like, okay, that feels like something that is important to manage and to stay calm. And so some of the thrive stuff felt not really like when it comes
- [93:16]
Jackson Doll
to any kind of time based, intense period. Do you have any advice on just like how to think about the. Assuming you can sort of tolerate like I think what you're saying earlier about just like, okay, we've gotten here before, whatever, self trust, confidence. What about the sort of tension between collecting information and seeing the room and seeing that kind of chips on the board and speed of action. Like how do you calibrate that? Obviously depends so much on the situation.
- [93:50]
Jared Weinstein
So much on the situation. And I think, I think humans are capable of a lot of things and we probably don't appreciate that. We probably like think it's. And it can be paralyzing and stuff like that. But you have to move forward and you probably oftentimes have more information than you realize to take the action. And I'm probably guilty of that too in a number of cases. I think at times I try to capture all the information and oftentimes when I look back like the initial 80% was like, you know, combination of that and your instinct, you could have acted.
- [94:30]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, yeah. How important was again, a little bit of a hazy word, but how important was like vision over the course of the period of building Thrive and at what points did it like, was it something that was pretty incremental? Was it something that kind of like had slugs of periods of time and there was a first era and a second era.
- [94:50]
Jared Weinstein
I think vision, I mean I think it's. In some ways it's never changed, which is to be an exceptional, not just a great, but like be an exceptional firm for the time period that we're in business and around like and go be a part of the most transformative companies. It took us a while to name it in that way. I think it's now expressed as, you know, be the most impactful partner to the most transformative companies or some version of that. But. But that whether we could articulate it or not, it Felt that that would have been consistently what we were aspiring to do. Now, in the early days, could you have gotten into the best companies? Not always. Could you have been the most impactful partner? Not yet, but we were looking toward that. And over time, the industries that were most interesting changed and the scale of the ability to invest changed. But I think that's always been the orientation of the firm. And I think in a good way the firm has been stubborn on that vision. And that's, that's one of the takeaways that I have from the Thrive experience is for an organization and for individuals, say, stay super stubborn on your vision. It is, it's your vision, it's your life. Don't live someone else's dream or vision. Like live and like own and be selfish about your vision, period. And the other thing, and I think people get this wrong, founders get this wrong, is like, don't be stubborn on your strategy. Be flexible and nimble and like, you know, and adapt. And I think Thrive was also. We were very good at adapting. And certainly, I mean, think of all the founders who start with something and they want to operate in a certain way, but you know, the, the initial product wedge doesn't make sense or the go to market strategy doesn't make sense. But that's where adaptability and flexibility really need to exist.
- [96:49]
Jackson Doll
Right. Right. What made. What makes slash made slash makes. Because I think it seems to broadly still be true today that plays so good at particularly identifying talent early.
- [97:03]
Jared Weinstein
I think it's a, it's a great question. I, in some ways I wish it were more scientific because then it would feel like something.
- [97:11]
Jackson Doll
But it does seem repeatable.
- [97:13]
Jared Weinstein
It has been repeatable. I think that we maybe didn't overcomplicate it. There were things that it was, you know, who are your smartest friends? Go ask them who their smartest friends are and go spend time with those people and see if they are values fit for the firm. I think it is. Yes, intelligence matters, but work ethic is a real thing at Thrive. And you wanted to see people who demonstrated that. I think there's something, you know, I remember talking to a Sequoia partner one day about, about talent. And the framing was something like, like look at their past career. Like, people will explain away things, but like, did they make good decisions? Like, did they choose the right place to go? Like, have they, you know, have they won before in sports? Have they? And, and you know, you can make a bunch of reasons why things didn't go someone's way, but there's something about like, you know, they, they in their situation, they made the. The right outcome happened. And I think there was a lot about that. I think there was a. This orientation of like, nothing's giving to you and you've gotta make it happen or you've gotta create it. That was. And I think that's very much like the immigrant mentality aspect of Thrive. We used to talk about, like, the biggest fear would be the person who's like, joins because thrive's made it versus the one who, you know, kind of. This Thrive always had more of the, like, we wanna storm the castle, not be the castle orientation.
- [98:52]
Jackson Doll
That's going to be an interesting challenge for them over the next decade.
- [98:56]
Jared Weinstein
I'm long
- [98:59]
Jackson Doll
from a leadership standpoint, how did you go about maintaining that kind of like incredible rigor and high bar while bringing in this kind of warmth and humanity that we talked about earlier? Maybe even camaraderie.
- [99:15]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I mean, to me, I. I don't think we were ever going to lower our bar. And I think the risk was more that we lowered our humanity, lowered our. Our camaraderie and compassion. And I just believe that, you know, thrive, it's not great if a place is a. You know, kindness is honesty, kindness is pushing someone. Kindness isn't like letting people get away with stuff. And I think we were. I thought we would get the best out of people if we were, you know, one team aligned around a mission. And if I could play a role in helping everyone at the firm be the best version of their self, if we had chosen the right people, then that would lead to good outcomes. I think maybe there was a little bit of Andy Card, White House Chief of Staff role of like, my job is to make everyone else successful. Like a Shane Battier kind of orientation there. Yeah. And I think we did a good job with that.
- [100:15]
Jackson Doll
What was the Monday question?
- [100:18]
Jared Weinstein
The Monday question was in an attempt to, I don't know, take ourselves seriously, take our job seriously, but not always ourselves seriously to that point on our humanity. When Covid started and we were all on zoom and in disparate places and it was. Became a little bit, I don't know, monotonous and, you know, kind of just giving updates. And it was exhausting.
- [100:46]
Jackson Doll
Very transactional.
- [100:47]
Jared Weinstein
Very transactional. And it's like you miss being in the office with everybody. My thing was, let's ask a different question of the whole team to start off the Monday. And it was everything from. I mean, I think I even used years ago the Patrick o' Shaughnessy question. What's the kindest thing anyone at Thrive's ever done for you? I asked. What's your favorite pizza Top day? I mean, there was silliness, there was funniness, but it was about, let's just stay in the fact that we are people who like each other and need to know each other, and we're not in each other's lives as much as we had been when we were all in New York and when we were 40, 50 people. At that point, I was gonna say
- [101:30]
Jackson Doll
it was like, people on a zoom.
- [101:33]
Jared Weinstein
I'm grateful that people leaned in. There was, like, at times, some eye rolling, but I think even for the eye rollers, it was like, God, that was, like, great. And, you know, we used to ask people on their first day. I think this question has remained, despite Josh fighting the question, you know, what's your favorite Girl Scout cookie? Like, a ridiculous question. But, like, come on, you know, like, let's. Let's keep things light. And. And then there were other firms that would be like, I heard if you asked this Monday question, it feels like a great way to, like, keep the team engaged. I'm like, should I trademark the Monday question?
- [102:03]
Jackson Doll
The little things.
- [102:04]
Jared Weinstein
Little things.
- [102:06]
Jackson Doll
In what ways did you guys use? And I guess I. I guess. I mean, this is leaders primarily meaning you and Josh. Like, in what ways was comp. Some kind of healthy competition amongst the young stable of star investors? Like, was that a useful. Like, what is the balance there? The venture capital is a weird thing in that it's some, obviously, Thrive as well as many other great firms. Talk about how it's one firm, it's one team. In some ways. It's a little bit like a swim team, though, in that, like, there is
- [102:40]
Jared Weinstein
a. I tried to fight that. I did. Never wanted us to apply for the Midas list, for example, because I thought that we had all worked on deals and maybe so. And so had sourced it and someone had supported on underwriting and someone else had helped win it. And, you know, we. We were always meeting and discussing deals, and it wasn't just in the Monday, man. We were getting on the phone at midnight, and we were, you know, flying places as a group to go sell ourselves to people. And so I do think there was that. I don't. You know, we didn't. We didn't really focus on. I think it was more intuitive around performance. And we wanted everyone to feel like you have your path at Thrive, and everyone has come from different backgrounds, and they all have their trajectory and their path. Do not compare yourself to someone else. Now there's a, these are competitive, ambitious young people. They will self compare. You don't have to encourage them to do that. I think the people that succeeded at Thrive over the long term took the long view and their goal wasn't to do a deal. You know, in the first six months of being at the firm, it was how do I learn what the strategy and the orientation and the, the way that this firm shows up? How do I learn how the more senior people underwrite and win deals, how they support companies and if I can take my own intelligence and style and mold it with, and meld it with that, I can ultimately then get my sea legs and go off and, and do my thing. And you think about people like Kareem and Miles and Vince and Philip. They started and they were willing to say this is a great place for me to be. I've got a lot to learn, I've got a lot to bring also and I'm gonna play the long game. And I mean look at how successful those guys have been.
- [104:32]
Jackson Doll
And all in pretty different individuated kind of flavors.
- [104:37]
Jared Weinstein
Totally different flavors.
- [104:38]
Jackson Doll
Right, right, right. As a, again, very human oriented, people oriented person, I'm curious what your lens broadly is on great founders and great companies and to what extent you can kind of understand or even underwrite an investment by understanding the people inside of a situation.
- [104:57]
Jared Weinstein
You know, as you said, like every investor has like a different flavor. And I, what I loved about my investing time at Thrive was the founders I got to back. And I think there's a lot of people say, you know, you need to new, you need 10 years before you know if you're any good at it or what you're good at. And as the firm scaled to more growth deals, I find myself also gravitated still towards early founders and being that first call, first partner. As I said earlier, I love listening and I think in the early days you, you know, be careful not to like dictate to a founder exactly what they should do and really listen and put yourself in that seat. There's a lot of great people who start businesses that don't work out. So I don't think it's only a founder thing. They have to make the right decisions on their business and their product. But a lot of mistakes we made at Thrive, all of us were probably choosing the wrong setup for a founder. And ultimately ideas are amazing. I love inspiring ideas and concepts and visions, but it's leaders who have to make them a reality. And thinking about people talk about product market fit. There's also founder opportunity fit in many ways and thinking about is this the right founder? And there's so many different kinds of founders out there. I mean there are consistent things, the tenacity, the ability to I think learn and growth oriented aspects but then it's very dependent on the opportunity.
- [106:31]
Jackson Doll
There is a thread that I think is quite obliqual applicable to your time at Thrive, but I think broadly applies and certainly is relevant to the work you do today too, which is just. I mentioned it briefly earlier, like being a amplifier, also a confidant, also an advisor. Like this role that you continue to find yourself in. I think a part of it that I want to get to is actually like the person situation fit the self knowledge that actually allows for somebody to flourish. But I think one place to start that came up as I was talking to people was the way that you seem to enter situations with a great amount of humility and not in this sort of like whatever woe is me or I'm low, but specifically like what do I not know about this? What like knowledge, what context do I have to gain before I'm ready to kind of bring a point of view forward? And I'm curious what to the extent you've identified that like where you think it comes from. Is it a White House thing? Is it a Alabama thing? Is it a faith thing? Is it a family thing?
- [107:43]
Jared Weinstein
Like that's a really good question. I maybe could be better served by having kind of blind confidence that I just know the path and just. You'll figure it out. I feel like I'm rarely the expert on anything. My career has been very horizontal across different things. And so maybe I bring a similar skill or orientation or disposition as a leader to those things, but I've got to learn the context of the place. And also like everyone has their own reality, even within Thrive, you know, I deserve this much compensation or this deal is right and you don't know. And so you've got to to pull out and kind of try to drive for the best conversation and be curious. I mean I remember when early days of Thrive when Chris called me and said we had passed on Twitch and he said we're making a mistake. And I said well you've done a really poor job of articulating why this is interesting and let's talk about it because I'm not hearing it. And so I'm not saying it's uninteresting. I actually believe in your conviction. But the rest of the team isn't Deep in the space. And I think by maybe creating a container and a place where he could better articulate it for me, allowed him to then better articulate it and went back to the team and ultimately did the deal.
- [109:09]
Jackson Doll
Maybe a similar question around a service orientation and kind of just broad based generosity. It's a hard question to answer, but I'm curious if there have been influences for you and your life that, that you can trace that back to.
- [109:24]
Jared Weinstein
My hero is my grandfather, and he was a World War II veteran who came back and built a business here in Birmingham and then served his community in different ways. He was a stoic man. Maybe I take some of that from him, but he was a really big heart. And people would over the years tell me like, I loved your granddad. And like, he was always so kind to me and you know, I always experienced him a little bit as like kind of the, like silent. But I, I think people. He was maybe magnetic in a really inspiring way. My parents were certainly, I think, you know, philanthropic in a certain way. And then as I said, you know, working for President Bush, you had a huge heart. And I see the best in people. I don't, I don't want to confuse that with, you know, that people, you know that I'm too naive to people's motivations or stuff, but I do see the best in people and I hope for the best in people. And I think through all those experiences, sometimes I can look at a situation and see where someone is in their own way and talk them through to a better place.
- [110:33]
Jackson Doll
Right, Right. One of the things that continues to come out, come up with anyone who has, I think, benefited from your, you as an advisor of any kind of, is that you are deeply empathetic and understanding and not soft. So it's just this like unique tension. Chris Pack put it as like he cares with the right weighting about the people and the outcomes. And there are people who kind of swing to one direction or another, but that balance being really effective. Another way of putting this maybe is like Jared, like he does. Most people hedge because they're like concerned about how you're going to react. Isn't like you don't hedge, but you're on the person's team.
- [111:12]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, well, I think I'm more interested in being effective than being right. I think, and I've certainly not always been effective. I think that as a empathetic person and a good listener, I think I have a. That's a good combination to understand where the other person is coming from. And I Find myself oftentimes setting the. Setting the table a little bit for conversations that maybe have more of that, you know, tough love and. But. And directness. I think I've grown in the ability to be like on the nail directness, but kind of being on the nail but not being effective feels wasted energy. And sometimes I have to be. You know, it's like my instinct on what the right answer is. That's almost the easy part. Sometimes it is. How do I. How do I take this other person, like on a journey to that point? I probably don't get it right. That as much as I would like. But that's. I think the orientation.
- [112:25]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. Your advice, all good advice, is shaped to the receiver in a way that maybe another element of what you were just saying, which is sort of like understanding that actually the answer may not be. Be as important as delivery is. Like, seemingly you are good at not projecting yourself into the situation as you are. You're just kind of like giving it like a. Like a clean inspection or something. It's weird, though, because maybe the attention I was speaking about earlier, it's like a combination of being incredibly personal and somewhat impersonal, like having distance.
- [113:03]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I think, you know, especially now as I'm sometimes more in these advisor seats, I'm able to kind of be a little more. I'm. I deeply care about them, but I'm in some ways dispassionate to the situation a little bit and able to give clearer advice.
- [113:19]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like also you're. You're good at keeping people accountable to themselves in the sense that you're not pushing them in a direction. You're helping them not get in their own way on the way they actually already want to go.
- [113:35]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. I mean, one of the. One of the kindest things that when I stepped back from thrive, Josh called me and said, we have something for you. And he had put together a book of letters from everyone on the team about, I don't know, the role I'd played or where I'd been most helpful. And it was neat because there were individual stories. But a thread to this topic that I don't know that I fully appreciated it until I got the book was, gosh, Jared sat on the same side of the table as me. Even if he was technically on the other side, even if he was my manager or we were in a disagreement, I kind of always felt like he put himself on my side of the table and tried to kind of at a whole human level, get the best of the situation and best of the outcome. And that was really nice to hear and it was also interesting to digest that and reflect on it and see, wow, maybe there's something that you can, you know, lean into more. And yeah, that, that's meant a lot. I'm glad that people benefit from that and find that valuable.
- [114:45]
Jackson Doll
There's a. It's not maybe quite this but it's sort of like a benefit of the doubt or something or like taking people. It's. It's what you said earlier, it's seeing the best in people and then also saying like you can be better or something. Yes. Do you have any advice or thoughts on help? Most people really struggle with like saying the hard thing or like moving into conflict in part because it is wrapped up in so many of these emotions.
- [115:13]
Jared Weinstein
It is really hard and it's hard when they're wrapped up in the situation or it's not a great environment. There is a. It's almost always the right thing. It's almost always. It's almost known by everyone too and you're just, you're cut. It's like you just get to the other side of it and there's almost this like. It's like everyone's almost sad that it's like come out even if it's a little shocking and it's like. Cause it's probably the truth and it needs to be said. It's usually not meant personally, but it's important. I think delaying those conversations just breeds worse energy or resentment or things like that. And so it's really valuable to get that stuff out on the table.
- [116:04]
Jackson Doll
We talked about it briefly with the founder thing around the kind of founder market fit. You have a packet that you've sent me and I presumably send other people called when do I use my best stuff. Can you talk about why that Both literally that specific example but also the concepts behind it is so important and maybe broadly like there's a bunch of themes in this kind of wheelhouse of like authenticity and self knowledge and alignment or like leaning into your genius. But like what is inside of that and why is it so important?
- [116:35]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, well, at the simplest level I think if all of us are doing whatever the best version of ourselves are, things are going to be, you know, pretty great. And I oftentimes think about and I'd use in one on ones with people on the team like, you know, like Michael Jordan was put on this earth to play basketball. Now it was fine that he went and played baseball for 18 months, but we're all really Fortunate that Michael Jordan played basketball for as long as he did. And like, what's your basketball? And like, what's your zone of genius? And the best stuff exercise, as you recall, is, you know, kind of over your largely, you know, teenager to adult years. When were you at your best? And you kind of list the categories and then that's interesting. But what's more important is you kind of say, well, what about those things was your best self? And I actually think what's most interesting is those sub bullets. And usually those rhyme with each other a lot more oftentimes than the top level. And so you're kind of given this instruction booklet of what aspects of an experience usually bring out the best version of myself. And it can be wide ranging. It can be the kind of people you're with, it can be the aspect of the project, it can be the function that you were asked to do. And I think what I try to push people with and what I've pushed myself is not that every decision and every experience you sign up for has to be perfectly the best stuff. But think about how far are you deviating from what this amazing past that says, well, this is your best.
- [118:07]
Jackson Doll
The correlation line or something.
- [118:09]
Jared Weinstein
And so just be careful if you're veering too far off on it.
- [118:13]
Jackson Doll
What I like about it too is, at least in the example you gave me, it's like some of the examples are literally like stuff when you're like a little kid or like in high school or. And seemingly quite trivial. I think there are multiple parts of that. One of them mainly just being that we often like, forget we get far, far away from ourselves. But the other part about it that is interesting is it's like almost inside. Maybe I'm misremembering or projecting a little bit, but part of what it felt like inside the questions is like, when do I actually like, like myself? What am I to have been me?
- [118:44]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah.
- [118:46]
Jackson Doll
And it. One of the things I found, and granted may, it was a unique time in my life when I was doing it, but I found it was a little hard at first to actually do it. Like, it. It shouldn't be that hard.
- [118:58]
Jared Weinstein
But like you, we.
- [118:59]
Jackson Doll
We abstract ourselves from these things.
- [119:01]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. And I think we oftentimes, like, want to like, examine and diagnose others versus ourselves and oftentimes the people that, that we think are causing us friction. And that's worth doing and understanding. Well, why is this set up not working? And how can I. But like, come on, like you're, you know, it's Self examination, self growth. And you know, one of Josh's great lines that I love is, you know, like, if I'm not embarrassed about the person I was two years ago, I'm not growing. And like, what a amazing approach to like, I was trying my best and I've worked to get better and being okay with kind of knowing that you have made mistakes in the past and need to grow from those.
- [119:44]
Jackson Doll
Right? Yeah. I mean there's also just an element of just. I think a lot of people spend their reluctance to self knowing is so strong that they'll just spend their life chasing like what somebody else thinks is good.
- [119:55]
Jared Weinstein
Right. The self knowing thing is like, well then you have to do something with it. And almost when you put it on someone else, you're like, well that's right. That's for them to figure out. It's not my responsibility. I've told them.
- [120:05]
Jackson Doll
Right. There's a kind of trio of things that tend to bubble together in very successful people of ego, ambition and impact. And those things are almost like, obviously they aren't totally at odds, but they can kind of be in tension with each other. And my sense is you've spent a lot of your life being a mirror and supporter and advisor to people with incredible ambition. And you're like helping them balance, you're helping amplify them in some ways, you're helping them balance those things in other ways. And I'm curious, like, what, what goes into helping those people see clearly and keep those things?
- [120:49]
Jared Weinstein
That's like a 6 degree black belt kind of human psychology question. I, I think it's easy to try to like, like dismiss ego or like fight ego.
- [121:02]
Jackson Doll
Right.
- [121:02]
Jared Weinstein
And I think that's pretty dangerous. I think having a healthy understanding and awareness of your ego is important. I think kind of looking at it and saying like, this is the way, you've served me well. This is the way, you know, and it's just a thing and it's a, it's a fuel. It's probably more of a dirty fuel than a clean fuel.
- [121:23]
Jackson Doll
Probably a critical one for almost anyone who does that.
- [121:25]
Jared Weinstein
But a clean fuel. I think it, Right. It's, it's maybe the fuel to like get you off the launch pad, but like not to continue the like total direct journey. I think ambition is, I don't know, it's kind of a combination of all of it. It feels like it's kind of like what kind of ambition is it? Ambition to build the biggest company? Is it to make the most money? Is it to have the you know, kind of encompasses almost a lot of it. Impact is this other thing. I think impact is self defined also. And it kind of comes, a lot of times it comes into people's. Comes in when I think maybe they realize that the ego fuel has served its purpose or something. And maybe a little bit of more secure, secure orientation that they have like more like, okay, I'm here. I don't need all this other. I don't need someone else saying I'm great again or I don't need maybe more money. I like, I'm like, I want to do something good. Maybe, maybe impact also. The other side of the coin is like this legacy orientation which may come back to ego.
- [122:40]
Jackson Doll
This is what I mean. I think these things are actually always revolving. It's like a three body problem. Yeah.
- [122:46]
Jared Weinstein
And it also can be like a little dizzying to try to tease it all out and separate it. I think that you probably ultimately get back to like the what is true for me? What is the life I want to live? I think back to my vision point, like, don't live someone else's life. Don't. Like, I think you start to realize like the popularity or the recognition, like, what does that really serve? Like ultimately, what do you want to do with this limited amount of time you have here? And who do you want to surround yourself? What brings out the best version of you? There's probably all of that a little bit in there, but if you kind of simplify it to how do you want to live the best days possible? And there's, you know, that's a really fortunate question to get to ask. And I think people need to recognize not everyone gets to ask themselves that question. So just being in that place to get to think about that is a luxury.
- [123:50]
Jackson Doll
One component of this. And I want to talk about the work you're doing now in Birmingham and looking ahead, but the extent to which we use legibility to feed those things. And by the way, legibility can feed ego, it can feed ambition, it can feed impact. You're someone who I think historically tends to lie low and if not outright be in the shadows. There's not a lot of Jerry Weinstein on the Internet. I'm grateful you're doing this with me today. Yeah. How do you. In what ways is legibility? And I don't just mean that in the super public Internet, whatever media sense, even just talking about what you're doing, there's some people who kind of skew one way and just say, put your head down and do the thing and there's people who skew the other way, which is all press is good press. How have you evolved your view on that?
- [124:47]
Jared Weinstein
I think that oftentimes, if you want to do, let's call it big stuff, important stuff, other people need to be on the bus with you. And if you want to go fast, go alone, you want to go far, go together, that kind of thing. And so if you want to bring other people on the bus, you need legibility at some level. And that can be in a one to one sense, that can be in a, you know, mission statement of a company or an orientation of what we're working on. And, and ultimately you have outside stakeholders, probably partners, collaborators, funders, the general public. And so I think that I hear you on. There's not a lot about me on the White House, on the, on the, in the public domain. But I also, like for my 20s, I was at the White House. It's a very legible place, people. Hey, I'm Jared Weinstein calling from the White House. I need the following.
- [125:43]
Jackson Doll
You don't need to explain yourself.
- [125:44]
Jared Weinstein
You don't need to explain it. And I also know Thrive, even if we were below the radar for a while, we were intentional that a brand was being built and the relevant people were starting to learn about us. I didn't feel like that they needed that. The people that needed to know about me knew about me and that was fine. And I also do think that if you're, you know, if you stick your head in the sand and don't share your work, you may not be as effective because there may be people out there that want to come collaborate with you or come along. And I don't think for me, it's a ego thing. I don't, I don't think, but I'm like, aware it could be, it's ultimately an effectiveness thing. And, you know, I want the work to speak for itself. And sometimes people need to know about the work.
- [126:41]
Jackson Doll
You Left thrive in 2022, did that feel like a risk?
- [126:46]
Jared Weinstein
Yes. I mean, it was. Someone told me, like, people look and think people do like courageous things. And then you talk to the person and they're like, I just like had to do it. It like wasn't. It was just the time to do the thing. I mean, as I think, you know, and as this conversation says, like, I love Thrive. I am so proud of it. I'm so proud of the people there across all aspects of the firm. And as I think we talked about, like, I'm an all in kind of Guy. My mom got terminally sick in 2000, and I was down with her a lot, and it became a little harder to become all in, but I think I was still all in. It also totally changes your perspective on a lot of things. There has been no bigger champion of Jared Weinstein in this world than Brenda Weinstein, and she needed a champion. And I was really glad that I was in a place to be a champion for her. And it's been a. She's in an unfortunately different kind of place. She's not the same kind of bubbly person she used to be, but she's still with us, and it's given me this amazing time. But it also was. I was going to step back from something that I cared a ton about, and I'm really proud of, in many ways. Thrive. I had so much confidence at that point that we had built something that worked and had amazing people and could carry on and was doing great things. That it was. Was, you know, a little bit easier to, like, hand it off. And I had, like, tons of confidence. Like, yeah, you know, they're like, you know, who's going to do this and who's gonna do that? I was like, yeah, guys, you're good. Like, you got this. You know, like, everyone can, like, move on. And so I. I set. Stayed on some boards, and I still take phone calls and help with things and invest in the firm and all of that kind of stuff. But, yeah, it felt. I don't know, it felt. It felt like the thing to do. And it was. Once I made the decision and we talked about it, it also felt. It felt right. It felt okay, like, a little bit of the unknown. I mean, we talked about, should I stay on more of, like, a venture partner kind of role? And I was like, I don't know. Like, I just think the right thing is to step back. And I will. I mean, everyone, like, I will always be a champion and a helper and whatever I can do. And Josh will remain like, a close. Has remained a close friend. I mean, whereas. And all the people there were close friends. And. Yeah, I mean, I think when you're operating at that level and involved in everything we were building, it feels a little kind of like, whoa, like, you're stepping off the platform and, you know, a little bit like, not, what is your. What will your identity be? A little bit. But I really trusted that the right thing to do was to step back and to focus at first on my mom and a little bit like, where did I. Where would I be drawn to Spend time and, and I, you know, I'm really happy with it.
- [129:58]
Jackson Doll
You've had two very critical, long identity consuming professional experiences. I helped start a startup and was there for four years and leaving felt like it was like my entire life. And so I imagine that is a. How long were you at Thrive? 12 years.
- [130:18]
Jared Weinstein
Like 11 to, you know, 11, 11 plus years.
- [130:22]
Jackson Doll
That's, that's a whole thing. You, I think as maybe as, as, as a prelude to returning Birmingham, you spent time in three very distinct places. I referred to earlier, dc, Silicon Valley and then New York. You seem to be a remarkably consistent person and so I'm curious how you've kind of maintain what you've maintained and to what extent you've remained consistent across moving across these very different worlds and maybe even like what you think is consistently relevant or valuable as you've gone through those different kind of. You've worn different hats.
- [131:03]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, well, you know, I do think, at least in the time I was in all of those different places, they are wildly different places in many cases. I feel like the same person I've always been and I sure hope I've grown and changed and been positively impacted by all those places. I think that I've been a hard worker since I was a kid. I have been a curious and friendly and compassionate person since I was a kid. I've been an ambitious person since I was a kid. I've wanted big things and exciting things and in some ways maybe novelty and difference, trying new things. I mean, D.C. it had very much, as we've discussed, a kind of a zero. You know, like the, you get the speech to the podium, the words have to be right. You were making changes of like, you know, this many people got this kind of government aid and you change it to make sure he was saying the exact right thing and that his tie was perfect and the schedule almost.
- [132:07]
Jackson Doll
How high can we get the floor?
- [132:08]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, it's just like, you know, and mistakes are always made, but like, it's really about like flawless execution kind of thing and ensuring that machine works. And you know, Silicon Valley and the time out there was, you know, as I said, like a different pair of pants. Like, whoa. Like, this is real risk taking. This is. You don't have to figure it out and you just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And you know, what starts as an idea and a pitch deck and some capital can become a massive enterprise. And it's like, whereas in government, these are institutions that have been around for a really long Time, you know, New York was incredible. I love New York. I'm there a lot. I think just the, you know, kind of the boldness and the ambition and the, you know, things are possible and the speed, the creativity. I'm really glad I lived in D.C. first. I think, like, it would have been hard to be in D.C. after living in New York and then. And Birmingham is, you know, the fourth place is very different now that I'm here a lot more.
- [133:18]
Jackson Doll
What is special about this place, Birmingham?
- [133:20]
Jared Weinstein
I mean, certainly it's a place that. That kind of. My family experienced the American dream. We came over from Europe and down from New York and started a kind of like peddler business that grew into aluminum metal manufacturer. And so it provided a ton for my family. And it also was a place that formed me. And I'm really grateful for what I got to see. And it, it, it. It's a place where I think family is really important. It's a place that. It's a really interesting city because Birmingham kind of came out of nowhere after the Civil War. It wasn't around. It was an industrial thing that kind of came out. And there were some railroads that crossed here. And that's why everyone congregated here after the Civil War. And it was on like a tear. I mean, from like 1870s until kind of 1950s, Birmingham was like the bet as like the next city or the city of the South. There's this fascinating history of like, they actually wanted to put what is now the Atlanta airport in Birmingham in the 1950s. And we like pushed in a different direction now, unfortunately, in the 1960s. It was a pretty ugly time in Birmingham and the country was watching that. And I think that has been a identity struggle for Birmingham in many ways since then. And I think it's important and I understand why people acknowledge that past and think about that past. And yet you have to acknowledge and move forward. And I get a lot of. I'm very interested in cities. Cities are super fascinating to me. I mean, I think maybe not for us who are moving around globally, but for a huge amount of the population. Cities are their kind of atomic unit of opportunity. And it's where they have to work and their family and their. Their school and their experiences. And so companies are complex and making companies work, but cities are massively more complex. And it's been really interesting. And I think there's a thread since I was kind of younger, going to Duke was really interesting. Unexpectedly. I mean, Raleigh, Durham was this place that was maybe not overly dissimilar from Alabama, kind of a rural place that with Research Triangle and these universities has kind of figured out some things to do. And so I think a lot about how can cities like a Birmingham change? And people sometimes when they say that sounds really hard and can you really do it? And then I think about a Detroit where, if you had read an article that said Amazon was putting an engineering center here and this cultural activity is happening In Detroit, like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that's like an Onion article. And now it's like reality. So in 15, 20 years, places are changeable. And I think a lot about what tools can I use, from the nonprofit space to investing here in companies to real estate, to both like cultural but kind of attitude changes that don't make Birmingham try to be anything that it's not. It's not trying to be Austin. It's just trying to be a better Birmingham and stay true to your identity, but also move forward toward making it the best place possible that it can be.
- [136:45]
Jackson Doll
Before we talk about what maybe can be done, looking ahead, as I understand it, you started getting involved here much, much earlier than when you moved back almost 2013 or something, pretty early into thrive. Why? And again, maybe there's an element of some kind of civic duty going back to the White House days. But, like, what. What went in? Was it obligation? Was it duty? Was it love? Was it gratefulness? Like, what. What caused you to start doing that? And how did you, by the way? Like, you weren't not busy, right?
- [137:23]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I think I was a few years into thrive, which was exciting, and Palantir was still going on, and I was like. Like, I could have been a little subconsciously worried that I was just becoming like a finance guy.
- [137:34]
Jackson Doll
I don't know.
- [137:34]
Jared Weinstein
And I was like, I was, you know, you weren't in government service anymore. And I think maybe back to my granddad as like a. A business leader that was civic and community focused. I was kind of like, what. What part of my identity? Like that it's. There's something thirsting there. And New York is amazing, as we both know. But I think I probably felt like my efforts like a drop in the bucket here and. And probably like, my heart's not here.
- [137:59]
Jackson Doll
Right.
- [137:59]
Jared Weinstein
And I was also looking at a city in Birmingham that. I mean, the reality is, like, growth has been slower here. There. There are things happening. But it also felt like I could take my experiences from D.C. and Silicon Valley and New York and things. I saw things that people were doing and almost like geographically arbitrage kind of like the things that were working in those markets and bring them here. And that started with an education program in 2013 and we called up this education program in San Francisco and said I'd like you to come to Birmingham. And it was like, click, we're not coming to Birmingham, Alabama. I was like, kind of what do you need to see? What would the goalpost be if you did hear about these things? And so for a number of years as I was in New York, I was kind of playing this matchmaker where I think I was legible to some of these national places of like oh, he's like in New York and he's in venture capital and so like maybe he understands us and he can help us think about Birmingham. And to people in Birmingham, I was identifying interesting innovative programs and I think they were saying, oh, Jared's seeing a wide spectrum of things. Maybe let's support him in bringing them here.
- [139:17]
Jackson Doll
When it comes to cities, as you said earlier, cities are. Companies are complicated. Cities are much more so there are companies that are effectively run like dictatorships. In fact we often glorify them. You can't run a city or even probably significantly affect a city in a super top down way when it comes to a theory of change for affecting a place that you care a ton about. Obviously I think one thing we were talking about the other day was just like how the timescale is very different than other problems. But I'm curious, one of the things as we were prepping for this too, I had mentioned something about non profits and you maybe made a comment that nonprofit is conflated with impact and I'm tool agnostic. But across these sort of types of things, I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about whether it be the infrastructure side, the civic side, the government side, the business side, the cultural and storytelling side. Like what have you learned as you've started to. I mean you've working on the problem for a long time but what have you learned as you try to like sink your teeth into it in terms of like what can happen, how long it takes things to happen, how these things kind of fit together. I realize that's a really open ended question.
- [140:35]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I love it. I mean I think think you probably top down needs to meet bottoms up. I think Singapore is probably an amazing top down example in many ways probably from Middle east cities that have more top down. My let's call it work on Birmingham 1.0 the first 10 years was in short it was going to find these national models in education and early childhood and workforce development and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial support, maybe in coding. I'm like, oh, these work. They have the, the most efficacy. They're very compelling strategies. And so I'm going to bring the best strategy here and execute on it. And I think that did have impact. I think, like, the programs were good, our outcomes were good. I also think that maybe a downstream unexpected example was, or it was an example to others of like, oh, you can go bring things here. And it was, it was kind of social entrepreneurship in many ways. I think that was and remains like a compelling part of the theory of change.
- [141:41]
Jackson Doll
And those things, to be clear, they don't need to be that tailored to Birmingham as part of the.
- [141:46]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I think they need to be local. I think anything needs to be localized. I don't think you can cookie cutter everything. There's gradients, but you have to meet the community a little bit where it is and then push the community. And that's what these programs did. But they were largely national models that I was kind of incub debating the Birmingham version of it. Continue to do that. Always interested in ways to do more of that. As I started to spend more time down here and I was also doing start investing and there would be startup founders and there were some real estate projects where I was thinking, okay, this would be neat to have downtown be more dynamic in this way. And this kind of thing also that I may see in other markets. Oh, gosh, like, like this thing exists in Brooklyn. It would be fun to have a Birmingham version of it and people would like that. And also, like, humans are humans. We kind of all like largely the same kind of thing. As I was down here more, I think I said, okay, Jared, you could keep finding the strategies yourself and bringing them here, but maybe you want to approach it a little differently, which is, instead of taking national strategies and bringing them to Birmingham, why don't you take people in Birmingham who are exhibiting versions of what you see at a kind of founder mode orientation and unleash them. And that's been kind of a new leg of the stool of my work, which is, I don't care what you're working on here. I just care that you're, like going for it. And there's great institutions here and there's companies that make sense for some people to work for. But I want to balance that with people who are saying, I want to go off and, you know, start this new tech company, I want to start this wind power company, I want to start a food pantry. I Want to start a restaurant? I want to start a sports youth league. I don't really care. It's kind of like a bottoms up. Let me unlock your potential and support some thrust maybe. Yeah. And kind of like a little bit like, I don't know, a thousand flowers blooming or something of just like, like more create the conditions for people who show a risk mindset relevant relative to the community or you know, we can say agency and unleash that agency and then support them on the journey as a venture investor would. It's kind of like we invest in a lot of sectors. This is kind of, you know, I don't know, impact venture. Some of them are companies. I'm investing in a ton of companies down here in a tech sort of way. I've invested in restaurant groups, I've invested in real estate developments and I've invested in non profit initiatives. It's kind of, that's when I say tool agnostic, what I mean when you
- [144:30]
Jackson Doll
say conditions like how important is money? And then like what are other, what else matters for these types of like if, if you, if you had $100 billion just to deploy, like what would be solved and what would not be solved?
- [144:47]
Jared Weinstein
Gonna be my 100 billion dollar investor.
- [144:50]
Jackson Doll
I think that, and for what it's worth, like, I don't know how much of my sense is Dan Gilbert being worth almost $100 billion or whatever it is has been really helpful for Detroit. But that's clearly not the only thing.
- [145:01]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I think it's helpful because the time horizon by which he can make his investments, he doesn't, you know, external capital may not work on that time horizon.
- [145:11]
Jackson Doll
Yeah.
- [145:12]
Jared Weinstein
So I think that is important. I think you can think in, in more decades and you can take, you know, buying the buildings that he did that didn't have a market return at the time and then create the conditions where that real estate will be valuable. I think that resources, financial resources are helpful. They, they can align people and drive things forward. I, a lot of people, there's a debate in markets like Birmingham that like, oh, there's an access to capital problem and you don't have venture capital the way other markets. And I think that's directionally true. And yet I know from our time at thrive, it's like I can wire money to a founder in any market in the world in 30 seconds and we are incentivized as anyone to go find those opportunities. And while they may not bump into you on Lafayette street the way things do in New York, we do go and hunt those things and venture investors are out there looking for them. So think I, I sometimes push back in Birmingham on the like it's just an access to capital. And we do have founders here who have built billion dollar businesses and they've found capital outside of Birmingham. So I think it's ultimately like we need to keep developing our founders to be not excellent just for Birmingham, but to be excellent in the global marketplace of whatever they're building. And that's where some of my more recent work is like hey, hey, don't just look around town at your competition, you know, like let's make, let's normalize what people are doing to kind of go for it. And what does it mean to really that growth mindset? Like what does it mean to compete on that global level with founders everywhere? And it's scary but I like supporting people and I don't really care what they're working on. And hopefully to your earlier point, I do the like, I listen and then also give the tough advice when they need to hear it.
- [147:10]
Jackson Doll
Right. Right. Another component of this is a huge part of expanding beyond a local maximum is being able to see the other peak. And it does seem that maybe especially for young people, the most ambitious thing you can conceive of is the most ambitious thing you've seen.
- [147:34]
Jared Weinstein
Absolutely starts with being comfortable taking risk. So I'm trying to lay the ground for people to feel more comfortable taking risk. I think that we have been in a time where the tech startup is the like sexy thing and that is important. But I don't know that every market has to be Silicon Valley. Can't be Silicon Valley. And company creation in general and entity creation I think is, is makes for a more dynamic place. And so I'm glad we have a set of people who are trying tech companies, but I'm just as interested in people trying non tech specific companies or new restaurants. We have, you know, it's pretty good food scene and we have people that are trying to be, you know, who are inspired not by just the people here, but the Keith McNallys and the others and that we're like think bigger.
- [148:29]
Jackson Doll
There's an element of this that is like culturally reflexive. Meaning the. Yeah, the best thing you've seen is. And that can compound in both directions. Right?
- [148:40]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. And I think that in many ways kind of like the Internet is making the world flatter and people see all these things. But I, I think it was like half the battle. It's like you still. That feels far away, you know. Brian Schickke feels exactly right. Right. And I think that's why examples here locally that work are so compounding. And so I think I want to create as many great outcomes and then I also want to highlight that work so that the.
- [149:11]
Jackson Doll
Make the proximity feel.
- [149:13]
Jared Weinstein
Make the proximity like, oh, I saw that guy at the coffee shop. Like, I can do that. It's not just this fairy tale thing far away.
- [149:20]
Jackson Doll
This is why representation is like not a woke thing. Like, it's like, like being able to see a person who looks like you or is from the same place as you or whatever the thing might be. There's like a psychological element of it that it's like, oh, wait, I could do that.
- [149:33]
Jared Weinstein
Absolutely.
- [149:34]
Jackson Doll
It's. It's really, really powerful. I think it'd be cool to hear you talk a little bit more about the other stuff you've been actively working on. It sounds like. And I know one of the main projects, maybe it goes all actually farther back to the Birmingham talks days. But can you talk a little bit about small magic and why that is a version, at least as I understand around like the kids experiencing language part like a version of this kind of reflexivity.
- [149:58]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. So. So we started working on Birmingham or started working Birmingham 2013. And as I said, I was like begging these national organizations to think about Birmingham. And you know, it was, you know, tiring, but we would get them here. And then one day in New York I get a call or an email and it's like, hey, we're Bloomberg Philanthropies. Are you like the Birmingham guy? I was like, what? Like, I was like, have I made it? And they said, we found a program out of Providence, Rhode island that focuses on early childhood kind of brain word development. And we're looking to take it to other cities. We've heard you've done a version of taking models to Birmingham. And it was neat because it was like, wow, I've been begging people so long to think about Birmingham and maybe, maybe we're making progress. Maybe there's something to this. And so the general concept is lower income kids hear 30 million less words by the age of five as higher income kids. And that is so important for brain.
- [150:54]
Jackson Doll
We mean 30 million less words.
- [150:56]
Jared Weinstein
Parents, caregivers, talk to them less, they're just not involved.
- [150:59]
Jackson Doll
They've heard 30 million less words.
- [151:02]
Jared Weinstein
Correct. And how much that specific interaction and not just like TV words, but also like conversational turns and the engagement with an adult reps, you know, just reps. And so they. It had had some early progress in Providence and Bloomberg had identified and wanted to bring it here. And so we partnered with them and partnered with the mayor's office here in Birmingham. And it was kind of an incubation in the same way we would do at Thrive where conceptually is an interesting idea. We needed to find a way to make it work for Birmingham. Absolutely found the right founder and a woman here named Ruthanne Moss. And I played kind of venture investor, board chairman, co founder. We are now the largest implementer of this solution in the country. The mission is to make Birmingham the best place to raise a kid under five. And it's a huge aspiration and that certainly goes beyond just this talks program. We've got to think about how are we providing, you know, childcare and how are we talking early childhood education tools broadly, you know, health related things. And so it's, it's big and it's bold. But I also think it's, I mean we have a responsibility to put kids on the highest trajectory we can. And schools are hard to influence the K to 12 system. And so early childhood is maybe an interesting, you know, more almost like an arbitrage, better sandbox box for to be entrepreneurial in versus trying to change the schools. And so it's, it's one of the initiatives here that I spend the most time on and really proud of.
- [152:40]
Jackson Doll
You said to me recently, you're busier than you've ever been. How's that?
- [152:45]
Jared Weinstein
It's. I, I've never had a problem with having a lot on my plate.
- [152:48]
Jackson Doll
I, well, sorry, I should clarify. I guess I mean twofold. I mean how is it. And I also mean like how, how is that possible? Yeah, like that's not intuitive for the. There is a person from the outside looking in who's like, oh yeah, Jared left Thrive and he came back to Birmingham and he's kind of hanging out.
- [153:04]
Jared Weinstein
Well, for a while, for a year or so there I was like just slow down, see what that feels like. And then I had this incredibly high bar for if this interests me, it deserves to be on the calendar and it better interest me a lot. And I'm interested in a lot of things. And that certainly goes beyond Birmingham. There's, you know, I remain super interested in investing in general. I think investment firms are fascinating. I love supporting Thrive however I can. And then there's new people and not even just in venture like emerging people building funds and they're interested in me helping them and that's exciting. I guess I think maybe what I meant by that is I have A lot of big things across the spectrum from Birmingham to. There's some other investments, there's investment firms. And I'm trying to stay at the most, like, strategic level of those things. I think sometimes in the other jobs there's a lot of like, busy work. And this feels like I'm really trying to stay at the like, not busy work, but very high ROI work. And I have as much as that on my plate.
- [154:15]
Jackson Doll
As I've had you maybe a little in the weeds, but you have both the maybe discretion and also, like ability to not get into the quote unquote busy work. But also I think what people seem to say about you is that you're like very willing to roll up your sleeves. Like how. What is the threshold on that? Maybe it's just about the top level choices.
- [154:42]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. I mean, you had to do that. And I think when I took on the responsibility at the White House, certainly, and in it Thrive, it was like,
- [154:49]
Jackson Doll
you know, but I don't necessarily even mean like in those contexts.
- [154:53]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I think I learned that it was important and I think I learned, as I said, Andy Card was like, you know, yes, strategic and you have to do stuff so that that would read me for. And it's like, you know, it's like, who wants to be about in a big shot that like, won't roll up their sleeves? Like, it's just kind of like, it's like such a high status kind of move and. And you know, like, I don't know, that's just not my energy.
- [155:18]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. How do you think about. Presumably you are less. You are more distributed. Like you have more seeds or things growing now, like, what are the costs and what are the benefits of concentration?
- [155:34]
Jared Weinstein
You know, two experiences in the White House and Thrive, where I was deeply concentrated, Like, I really love those. And yet, you know, it's funny, it's like you were at a thing at the White House, but you had a thousand things going on and Thrive. You have a portfolio of companies and projects.
- [155:49]
Jackson Doll
So concentrated frames within those.
- [155:51]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah. And I think now, you know, I feel, yes, there are a number of projects, initiatives, investments, you know, people that I'm trying to help. But I'm also like deeply concentrated and disciplined on like almost being selfish in a way of, like, what am I most interested in? And if I'm interested in it, like, I'm going to be unapologetic and go explore it and however long it serves me, and I remain excited and think I can help. Great. I get that from perhaps an external view that can look like, I don't know, spread thin. And I frankly get de energized by being spread too thin. And that's why I've started to build a team that can lever me up more and help me be sufficiently effective at this broad range of things I've got going on. I do imagine that I will continue to concentrate and narrow. Whether that ends up being affirmed one day or a role leading something, I'm not totally sure I'm more okay with that. I think earlier in my career I would have been very nervous about what's the right thing to do, what's the thing, the, you know, the world or
- [157:06]
Jackson Doll
I've been out of the game, quote unquote for long.
- [157:08]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I don't feel.
- [157:09]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, there's an element too of like one good way to find a really concentrated thing is to plant a lot of seeds.
- [157:15]
Jared Weinstein
Absolutely. And I think reap. I got some advice from an amazing mentor named Tom Tierney, who was an early leader of Bain Capital and Bain Consulting. And I had actually brought him down to sit with the President about, you know, what a post presidency life could look like. He had helped leaders think about that. And I remember him saying like Jared, I've always found like repotting myself has been an incredibly valuable way to live my life. And you know, potted myself in D.C. and then potted myself and you know, we're potting some things going on now and that'll change too.
- [157:51]
Jackson Doll
Did you. We didn't talk about it when we were speaking about it earlier. When did you first come across the when do you use your best stuff idea?
- [158:00]
Jared Weinstein
I was fortunate to be introduced to a coach which I had never known much about the executive coaching world. And someone said Tiger woods still has a coach and he's at the top of his game and so leaders should try coaches. And so I met someone and she gave me the exercise and I've since sent it around a lot.
- [158:26]
Jackson Doll
But it's probably helpful in the. In approaching the like combo of self knowledge and happiness quotient.
- [158:33]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, absolutely.
- [158:36]
Jackson Doll
Do you think about your life in like acts or in like, like at the very least you could retroactively look back and you have. There's some like pretty clear chunks and I'm curious if that's still resonant. Do you feel like you're in a third one of those? Is it a pause? Is that not the right way to think about it?
- [158:54]
Jared Weinstein
I mean, I think it set my set of experiences being quite different from each other. I think that sets up that way and I think about it because they were very different for me, too. I mean, DC and Thrive and now has this more kind of focused on things outside of work a little more so. I think so, but I don't know that I think that this act will look, you know, oh, it'll be 10 years, just like the previous two were kind of 10 years. Or that'll have, you know, a story that the outside world finds as interesting. I mean, like. And I'm sure someone's like, oh, he's, you know, thrive in the White House. Like, what's the next thing? And that's like a lot of external pressure to put on, you know, like my story. And I don't, you know, it's like, I think it may have it because I think if I explore and go after things that are interesting to me.
- [159:47]
Jackson Doll
Doesn't seem like you guys said the two other things via. Super. I don't want to say not deliberate, but it wasn't like very.
- [159:53]
Jared Weinstein
Wasn't for the purpose of the story.
- [159:55]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [159:57]
Jared Weinstein
That feels like I, you know, it. There's a lot of pressure that people have to do that. And yet, gosh, that's like someone else's, you know, that's. That's kind of doing it for someone else. Yes.
- [160:08]
Jackson Doll
A few other things we talked. We've talked about a handful of kind of people who have been influential on you and mentors. Two we didn't speak about explicitly in the context of Thrive. John Winkle Reed and Nitin Noria. I'm curious to extent those guys were influential on you personally or on Thrive, what you learned from them.
- [160:29]
Jared Weinstein
I want to give them both appropriate time. I mean, John Winklered is such a special person, and he was special for Thrive in our early days where we, as I said, we tried to learn from others who had done things. But John was there in the weeds with us, and he now leads tpg. He is such a motivating individual to be around. He absolutely was in the trenches of Goldman Sachs for his career, helped scale that organization. And the fact that he was willing to sit with us when we were not a big firm, that was well known. And he's a great listener. He, I think, helped both the firm and also Josh and me individually think about our own leadership style. You know, he could pick up on the phone and call me and ask, you know, like, I'm thinking about, I don't know, going to buy some dollar stores. And I'll be like, I'm in. You know, like, I'm thinking about doing this, like, you know, John is. Is really special. And I know everyone, whether at Goldman or Thrive or tpg, has kind of loved working with him. And. And I think for me also at that time in Thrive, I had always. I had lived in a very strong mentor or environment in the White House. And so many different individuals, the ones we've talked about, who are a few years old or the president and then we get to Thrive, and it's like, just gotta figure this out. And so having John as kind of this guide in all of that and, you know, never put his finger too strong on what we were doing was more, you know, someone to talk to and listen and work through things with was. Was really special. And. And Nithin came in to Thrive. You know, Josh and Nabil had known him when they were at Harvard Business School and stayed in touch with him. And Nithin is. Like a Yoda kind of figure. Like, there's just so much wisdom in Nithin, and he sees things very clearly. He is a straight talker. I mean, he's very strategic and he sees all the dimensions of organizations. And, you know, a person not only was dean and of Harvard Business School, but he's been on boards of massive companies and leaders go to him. And the fact that, you know, I had a few years with Nithin and he's still around the organization today, and he. And fortunately, he stayed in my life and he's spent time with Birmingham entrepreneurs, which I'm so grateful for, because it's like every. His kind of wisdom to words ratio is so high. And he's also a great, great human being.
- [163:31]
Jackson Doll
It's telling that you guys found a way to have people like that around over the course of building the firm. Do you. This might be too personal, in which case it's fine, but do you. If what causes you, if you do, to reach out to the president for advice or otherwise.
- [163:54]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I'll start. I remember when we were working, when I was working for him, and people would call him, his friends or people that had left and he'd make time for them, but then they'd maybe like, call a few weeks later and be like, I just talked to that person. So I kind of try to, like, use my time with him. I know that he cares about me and he has my best interest at heart. And there's been some times with big decisions I've had in life and some work stuff, and he was willing to listen, speak. He's an instinctual person. And he said, this is what I think and it was so perfect advice. He called me earlier this year about my mom and, and I didn't make it very long without getting a little sniffly. But he wants the best for me and that means a ton. And I feel like the relationship has evolved from me working for him to being someone he cares about, friendly with. I would do anything for him. And as I said, other than my parents and grandparents, like no person has had more of a positive impact on me.
- [165:13]
Jackson Doll
Not obviously to be compared and not someone you, to my knowledge, you know at least well. But what do you admire about Nick Saban?
- [165:20]
Jared Weinstein
Well, I'm really grateful that he brought us as many national championships as he did. And I think his commitment to excellence, to competing not with others, but with his self, like he's motivated to just be better. And even when he was on the top of his game, he wanted to be better. A number of years ago actually I was sitting with Nithin at Thrive and I said like we should get a Sabin case study. And so I called some people down in Birmingham and he called the sports hbs, you know, case study person and we ended up putting this case study together. Then I, that I went and saw delivered and you know, I think he's, the process orientation there is incredibly successful. It's worked, it's worked for him. He like refined it. I think also think look at all the coaches that have gone on to do great things. I mean he set an example. I'm sure it wasn't an easy environment always to work in, but I also imagine those coaches are incredibly grateful that they got to see what excellence looks like and now, you know, are clearly benefiting from that.
- [166:31]
Jackson Doll
Yeah, the tree is bananas. What are you drawn to in sports broadly? Sports on one hand are totally trivial and on the other hand are one of the more human things we have. But I'm curious.
- [166:51]
Jared Weinstein
Yeah, I think I've thought about that because I think I wrote my college essay on the Alabama Auburn game as a kid and it was both like, it's amazing that it like takes up so much attention in the state and yet like it sure does take up a lot of attention in the state and you know, I, I do think it is, it's an interesting like community bring together thing I think you can have. I mean one, I enjoy it and that's like maybe enough. And also historically I think sports organizations haven't always been the, the best run organizations relative to other industries in the economy. And now you're seeing with so many dollars in there a lot More investment. And so I've kind of curious, like, in what ways can excellent leadership and organizational stuff impact sports organizations?
- [167:47]
Jackson Doll
What do you hope to be known for or most hoped to be known for?
- [167:51]
Jared Weinstein
Maybe it comes back. I mean, I hope that I'm known as like a great friend, someone who brought out the best in other people. Someone who I don't want to say pushed in a hard way, but, you know, encouraged people to bring out their best self. Someone who was. Was good energy to be around. And any of the other, like accolades separate from that just feel like, like kind of details.
- [168:22]
Jackson Doll
Yeah. My last question, what have you learned from and what do you most admire in your mom?
- [168:34]
Jared Weinstein
I've learned what unconditional love is. I've learned what it means to like, fully champion a person. And the way she championed me. I've learned to like, dream big. And I admire how much she loved me and my sister and, you know, how she showed up to like, just want the best for us.
- [169:05]
Jackson Doll
Those last two, I think, go together. Thank you, Jerry. This was great.
- [169:08]
Jared Weinstein
Thanks, Jackson. Appreciate it.
- [169:10]
Jackson Doll
Of course, thanks again to Notion for presenting Dialectic and thank you for listening. Notion is a tool that you can use with your collaborators and with the incredible power of AIs to work deeper, to think together and to produce more. I think the best tools amplify us and Notion is a tool that is focused on doing that, specifically on enabling you to more deeply immerse yourself in the work that matters, to do it with the people who inspire, who improve and who expand you and get help from AI along the way so that you can do do even more. Once again, you can find more@notion.com dialectic and they are shipping new updates, seems like every week at this point, pushing the bar for all of the ways you can use different AIs. One of the things that's great about Notion is that it's a bit of a Switzerland, so you can cycle between all of the models that you might use, whether it's anthropics models or OpenAI's or otherwise. Thank you again for listening and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. And thanks again to Notion. I will see you next time.