OpenGov Got Seat at White House Roundtable and Is Part-Owned by Kushner Family
wsj.comWhich scenario is more likely:
(1) Thrive capital becomes the top firm for supporting startups that want to disrupt govn-related industries. It will become common knowledge that the Kushner-Kushner direct channel will be shamelessly exploited by Thrive and their portfolio.
(2) Thrive capital becomes associated with incompetence and dumb money, the type of ignorant bravado that begets wars, environmental disasters, haphazard vetting, creation of opacity instead of transparency, and corruption. Sensible startups will avoid this money because of the taint it will leave on them in 3-4 years when they are seeking public markets.
Should OpenGov have been excluded from the White House Roundtable because of the connection? Was the connection used to gain an undue advantage? Maybe this was addressed in the article (behind a paywall for me), but otherwise this seems tenuous.
Thrive was a <$2M series B(1) investor, they have closed $70M in funding since then. It's unclear whether Joshua Kushner was involved with OpenGov, or one of his GPs. No one from Thrive currently sits on the board.
So we get cries of "nepotism!" and "cronyism!" because, basically, "the brother of one of our investors is married to the daughter of someone important". (I know, Jared Kushner is himself in a position of power: I drew that out as hyperbole.)
Do you know how common this is? Or how easy it is to find a 2nd or 3rd level relationship like this?
Philanthropic contribution to wikipedia through performance art? The selected examples section for nepotism was looking pretty thin and they are DOING something about that! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism)
I think this is called hustle, is it not?
Is this not proof the media is losing touch with reality...
This is generally called corruption, when a politician uses their political influence to give favors and influence to family and friends.
This kind of corruption is not necessarily illegal if you do it right, but it's looked down upon because it means you're using the office for personal gain rather than the gain of your constituents.
I think I'd call it cronyism or nepotism.
If his company isn't qualified or they are getting overpaid then I'd call it corruption.
It stinks either way.
What gives you the impression they aren't qualified? According to their marketing material at least, they specialize in making governments more effective and accountable. I'm actually glad that those concepts would be welcomed in the Trump Whitehouse.
> I think I'd call it cronyism or nepotism.
I'd call those specific forms of corruption.
It's possible to hire friends/family without it being cronyism/nepotism, if they're as qualified (or more) than other job applicants.
Hustling is not that hard if your father-in-law is the president and your wife is a government official. Sounds more like blatant nepotism.
It's called hustle if you are not the son-in-law of the boss. Sorry that's rude, I guess this guy is just a brilliant genius, born lucky.
Next you will tell me SV is a meritocracy...
Nepotism is the opposite of hustle.
A hustle is lying about your abilities to trick weaker opponents into taking bad bets. Nepotism is getting a job because you are related to somone in an organization. So, I wouldn't call them opposites of each other...
But if you are given something because of nepotism, it means you didn't hustle for it.