Bob Iger has had a strange and varied post-executive afterlife in the two years since announcing to Ben Smith that he was semi-un-retiring from Disney, after handing reins to his successor, Bob Chapek, in order to help steer the company through the Covid pandemic. Since then, of course, Iger has finally relaxed his grip on Disney, officially stepped away, and moved onto other projects, such as joining the board of Perfect Day, a dairy replacement company, and Genies, a digital avatar startup.
Earlier this week, Iger announced that he is going to be sprinkling some of his pixie dust on Thrive Capital, the New York-based V.C. shop run by Josh Kushner, as a venture partner. Josh, not to be confused with his older brother, Jared, has managed to keep his head about him as all others were losing theirs, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, and he’s built for himself a successful firm. Thrive Capital, which he founded as a 25-year-old scion in 2009, has some $16 billion in assets under management and closed, earlier this year, on its eighth fund, for about $3 billion.
Over the years, Thrive has invested in companies such as Instagram, Instacart, Robinhood, Spotify, Slack, Stripe, and Oscar Health, Inc., which Josh co-founded in 2012 and now has a market value of $1.2 billion, down by two-thirds in the past year. In short, Josh has been a success as an investor with a net worth, estimated by Forbes, at $2 billion these days, about double his brother’s net worth, even after the Saudis reportedly invested some $2 billion into Jared’s private equity fund. Apparently, Josh and Bob met through Josh’s wife, the supermodel Karlie Kloss, which seems to be a most Hollywood script-like way for them to get to know each other. How charming.