29-Year-Old Joshua Kushner Raises A $400 Million Fund After Investing In $1 Billion Startups Like Twitch And Instagram

Entrepreneur and investor Joshua Kushner has raised a fourth fund for his firm, Thrive Capital, to continue investing in early-stage startups.

The new fund exceeds $400 million; LPs include Princeton University, Wellcome Trust, and numerous other endowments. Thrive Capital was founded five years ago; the first fund Kushner raised was $10 million, and the second was $40 million. The previous fund was $150 million, making this fourth fund Kushner's largest to date.

Thrive Capital has invested in companies that have had billion-dollar exits including Twitch, which sold to Amazon for $1 billion over the summer, and Instagram which sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. While Kushner sourced the Instagram deal, his associate Chris Paik was able to get Thrive Capital into Twitch before the Amazon sale. Thrive has money in startups such as Harry's, a shaving company that raised $130 million soon after its launch, secret-sharing startup Whisper, and UrbanCompass, a home rental and sales startup that quickly grew to a $360 million valuation.

Part of Kushner's appeal to founders is that he's an entrepreneur himself. Kusher co-founded a Zynga-like startup, Vostu, when he was in college. It soared to a high valuation then plummeted alongside other Facebook-based gaming companies. Now he's running an insurance startup, Oscar. Although it's only one year old, the startup has been valued by venture capitalists at ~ $800 million.