How Mark Zuckerberg, Palmer Luckey, Josh Kushner & Scott Wu Think | Jeremy Stern
In a Nutshell
Jeremy Stern profiles Mark Zuckerberg, Palmer Luckey, Josh Kushner, and Scott Wu by examining their personal lives and historical context rather than business strategies. Zuckerberg's Augustus fixation and relentless building mentality, Luckey's willingness to sacrifice his company for political beliefs, Kushner's family Holocaust legacy, and Wu's authentic leadership style reveal how these figures operate. Stern argues that understanding these individuals' psychology and cultural positioning matters more than extracting tactical lessons from their methods.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Jeremy Stern's profile on Mark Zuckerberg was written after Zuckerberg's team reached out toward the end of last year. Stern had previously written a profile on Paul Murrli, who started Oculus, where Zuckerberg was portrayed as the villain. After 2016, Zuckerberg had fired Palmer Luckey after he made a small contribution to a pro-Trump group, creating a legendary falling out in Silicon Valley. Stern was surprised to hear from Zuckerberg's team given this history.
Stern and Zuckerberg initially met for an off-the-record lunch lasting a couple of hours. Stern initially felt pessimistic about writing a piece because Zuckerberg is one of the most overexposed people on the planet, having been under a microscope for 25 years.
Stern identified several compelling angles for the piece. Zuckerberg is the last man standing from his generation of founders - Larry and Sergey stepped away, Bezos stepped away, Bill Gates stepped away, and Jobs died. He is also representative of millennials as founders since there are literally no others at his level or scale. The second most valuable company started by a millennial is Stripe, worth approximately $100-150 billion, about one-tenth of Zuckerberg's company.
Stern explains that profiles typically begin with a topic of interest before finding the right person to explore that topic. With Zuckerberg, Stern was initially interested in themes around the 2016-2020 period of government pressure to censor social media, the national debate about whether social media is harmful like alcohol and cigarettes, and whether it should be regulated.
Stern references a Talmud quote where a rabbi says "when you kill a person you destroy a world," meaning every individual life contains many different worlds within it. Once you spend time with someone, talking to their family, friends, and colleagues, reading every book written about them, an entire universe of relationships, work, successes, and failures opens up, and only then do you figure out what the piece is really about.
Stern acknowledges that the podcast host's interest in how Zuckerberg thinks about building products, recruiting talent, and building the company is underexplored territory. However, Stern's angle focuses on who the person is, what it's like to be them, and what it's like for people in their lives to be around them. If he can tilt people's gyroscope on a person's life and psychology by 10%, he considers that an accomplishment.
The piece opens with an interview with Zuckerberg's parents and closes with time spent with his family and wife, explaining the personal lens Stern brought to the profile rather than hardcore business details.
Zuckerberg has a long-standing interest in Romans and Augustus specifically, dating back to when he was 15, 16, 17 years old. He took Latin courses in high school where he read and memorized verses from Virgil's Aeneid, which he still remembers at age 42 and can recite. Augustus is a major figure in that curriculum.
At early Facebook meetings, Zuckerberg would end meetings by saying "Carthage must be destroyed." Sean Parker, early president of Facebook, told him to stop because it could be cited in an antitrust suit. Zuckerberg used to shout "domination" at the end of meetings until Parker made him stop.
At a recent keynote, Zuckerberg brought out his personal muse agent and referred to it as a "Grippa," referencing Agrippa, one of Augustus's two key early lieutenants whose death Augustus mourned until the end of his life.
Augustus was the most sensible of the Roman emperors, avoiding the excesses of his successors. Later emperors were typically egoomaniacs without the political mind for empire building, wasting trust with constituencies and lacking the founder gene to build a state, standing army, and trade-based economy.
Zuckerberg's interpretation of Augustus focuses on transforming a pillage-based economy into a trade-based economy, showing Roman citizens they didn't have to fight endless civil wars and could live, trade, and work in peace. Stern notes this is a selective interpretation since Augustus erected a standing army and eliminated political liberty, turning Rome from a republic into a system based on one man's power.
When speaking to people around Zuckerberg, two consistent observations emerge: people underestimate how competitive and ruthless he can be in business, and he's actually not an asshole - he doesn't treat people badly and is a pretty nice guy. Even his critics, rivals, and enemies confirmed both points.
A former AI researcher who worked for Zuckerberg and now works at a competing lab described him as "the fucking Terminator" who "just doesn't stop." One advantage is that he's always discontent and unhappy, but not an asshole - he just keeps moving forward.
Zuckerberg stated that his advantage relative to Sam Altman and Elon is that the things he does are "kind of unsexy" - he's very good at getting a team and improving something over a long period of time. Due to Meta's structure, he doesn't have to keep raising more money or ask other people's permission to do what he's doing.
Stern came to see Zuckerberg in the mold of a classical American business mogul, distinct from the recent generation of AI founders. Zuckerberg's edge is sitting down with a team and methodically improving a single product over decades, building more value into it. He doesn't do big splashy things.
Zuckerberg is ideologically coherent and unconfused in a way that major AI figures are not. He sees Meta as a business first and foremost, not overestimating the company's impact on history, whereas AI figures often view their company as the last thing that will ever be built in human history.
Despite skepticism about Meta's AI position, Stern notes that Zuckerberg has repeatedly defied predictions of failure. The bull case for Meta in AI centers on distribution: approximately half of all human beings use WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, or Meta AI at any given time. Meta has spent 20 years negotiating infrastructure contracts with municipal and state governments, figuring out tax incentives, and determining how data center revenue pays for public works.
This positions Meta with distribution, infrastructure, and attention dominance through their apps. Pure AI labs lack this infrastructure and must rent compute and other resources that Meta owns.
Zuckerberg has stated he's "addicted to building" and just likes building things. He didn't think he was starting a company - it was a natural evolution of the fact that he builds. He'll never stop and won't quit.
Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are singular in that it's unimaginable they would step back and live on a yacht or engage in philanthropy full-time. Both will likely die as CEO.
In 2006, Yahoo offered $1 billion to buy Facebook. The entire management team wanted to accept, and the board (Don Graham and Peter Thiel) encouraged acceptance. Zuckerberg, at 21-22 years old owning 70% of the company, immediately said no. The management team walked away because he wouldn't take the money. Similar episodes have occurred throughout the company's history.
Stern's profile on Palmer Luckey was his first profile of a person. Before that, he had been writing about American politics, German politics, and foreign policy. Stern typically starts with a topic of interest and then finds the person who best explores that topic.
The Palmer Luckey profile was chosen after October 7th in Israel, focusing on the technological overmatch the Israeli military had over Hamas.
The Israeli military was thought to have the most advanced fourth generation hybrid warfare style military on the planet with drone fleets, satellites, underground sensors, and smart fences. This technology was believed to have obviated the need for classical military hardware like tanks and artillery. However, when Hamas invaded on October 7th, they did so using hang gliders, construction equipment, and small arms.
The October 7th attack raised questions about whether defense tech is real or ineffective. The war in Ukraine presents a mix of next generation warfare fought by drone swarms alongside hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds fighting in trenches with sticks - a form of warfare at least 150 years old.
Palmer Luckey was already a legend and icon within tech but wasn't well known outside of it at the time of the interview. The writer had heard about Anderl, a new company started by the founder of Oculus that was going to build the first new prime defense technology company in 100 years.
The original intent was to write a 30,000-word piece based on an interview with Palmer Luckey about the state of defense technology. However, after spending time with him, talking to people in his life, and learning about his background, the piece evolved into a 15,000-word cradle to grave profile of his entire life.
The piece came out around August 2024, approximately one month after the assassination attempt on Trump. Following this event, Silicon Valley founders and VCs began aligning behind Trump after not supporting him in the previous two election cycles.
What was notable about Palmer Luckey's support for Trump was that he stood behind it at a moment when it wasn't popular in his industry and when it cost him everything. His support led to him getting fired by Facebook after they acquired his company, resulting in the loss of the company he had spent his adult life building.
The writer typically spends 6 months to a year working on each piece. Once a piece is completed and sent to the copy editor, they experience a phenomenon where they forget many details, describing it as getting a hole in their brain that never gets filled back in.
The writer's approach differs from podcasting in that they don't see their work as stripmining insights for others to apply to their businesses. Instead, the value lies in understanding the lives of individual people who seem unreal from the outside due to their power, fame, celebrity, or political relevance, and examining the larger cultural and historical patterns that impact their lives.
Some of these figures see themselves as timespanning figures who, if they had existed 500 years ago, would have been raising armies and becoming emperors rather than building technology companies. The writer notes that while this perspective has merit, these people are also historically contingent in important ways.
When these people are examined 100, 200, or 500 years from now, figures like Zuckerberg will be understood in the context of the specific world they lived in rather than as timeless figures.
The writer finds value in understanding and revealing individual human lives in their messiness and impact, rather than gathering insights to apply to their own life. They note that the stories people tell themselves about their lives serve both to be valuable and accurate while also protecting against uncomfortable thoughts about mortality and meaninglessness.
When asked if they are introspective, the writer acknowledges they are very introspective but also notes that they spend most of their time thinking about other people rather than themselves. They suggest they might not be introspective enough to understand how their work changes them.
The writer believes there are a few things they're good at and a few things that make them happy, but only one thing that's both: writing. Over the last several years, they've been focused on the craft of writing prose, storytelling, narrative, and bringing literary or cinematic ambition to the lives of core figures in business and technology.
The writer references a David Foster Wallace essay about writers as natural-born watchers, lurkers, and starers who covet being witnesses of other things and other people. Writers fear having the tables turned where they become the ones being watched and interrogated.
Seven or eight years ago, the writer had a completely different life in the army, 8,000 miles from their current location. The transition to doing things in public is relatively new to them.
The writer references a quote from Zero to One: "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places." They do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.
The writer's interest in technology and business figures stems from recognizing that they have become the most interesting, interdisciplinary, and culturally central figures in American life. This wasn't always the case and won't always be the case, but it is currently.
In the 1940s, physicists and national security bureaucrats were the central figures. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was musicians, filmmakers, and writers. In the last 10 to 20 years, technologists and business people have become the central figures.
The most talented prose stylists who bring real literary ambition to their writing tend not to be in the technology space. The quality of prose covering technology and business isn't great - it's not built to last and isn't of interest years after being written.
There was a great tradition of long-form American magazine writing that was destroyed in the last 10 to 20 years, starting with Facebook. This tradition includes the New Yorker in the 1940s and 1950s, Esquire in the 1960s, and Vanity Fair and Harper's in the 1980s and 1990s.
The writer saw an opportunity to bring literary ambition to writing about people in business and technology, representing a slice of the market that was available to be taken.
Scott Wu was profiled because he represented a major AI figure who is a technology nerd but also a humanist - someone who might be trusted with AI technology. Unlike other AI figures who are seen as grating, irritating, annoying, and unself-aware, Wu was seen as someone readers might find more valuable to hear from.
The standard interview process involves a minimum of two different 90-minute conversations separated by a sizable interval. Scott Wu was notable for not being stage-managed or overly manicured, with no layers of bureaucracy, PR, or media training separating the interviewer from him.
Due to Wu's introspective willingness and the good rapport developed during interviews, the writer decided that turning him into a character in a story wouldn't be as good as letting readers hear from him directly. The piece was structured to make readers feel more like they're in the room during the conversation.
People interviewed about Scott Wu described him as an authentic mathematics genius. Even among other people who have won gold at international math, physics, and computer programming Olympiads, he's considered the GOAT competitor and the GOAT coach and mentor. He's described as a godfather figure to many in that community.
Despite not being 30 years old, Scott Wu has a natural presence where people immediately identify him as the leader in any group. When shown a picture with 12 other people from the company who competed in Olympiads, people who don't know any of them will point to him as the leader.
Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who is described as the most competitive person in the world at the thing he does, Scott Wu has a Michael Jordan-like competitiveness where he wants to win at everything, not just his primary field. This includes wanting to compete at trivial activities like seeing who can eat a salad the fastest.
Stern described Scott Wu as someone who repeatedly refuses acquisition offers despite significant financial pressure from major players. Wu stated he doesn't view himself as conquerable and wants to ride the company to its natural conclusion rather than sell. Stern found this plausible and appreciated that Wu appeared to be the same person during interviews as when doing product reviews, raising money, or in personal settings. Stern noted Wu lacks extensive media training and doesn't seem interested in developing that aspect of himself.
The Kushner family profile became Colossus's most viewed piece at the time. Stern's interest in the family predated Jared Kushner's White House involvement, stemming from the family's New Jersey real estate empire built by the father and grandfather. The grandfather's legal troubles and the family's Holocaust survival story particularly intrigued Stern, who noted the remarkable trajectory of the grandmother escaping the Holocaust with nothing and later having Bill Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu visit her home seeking political favors.
The Kushner grandmother was part of the Bellski partisans, a group of concentration camp escapees who lived in the forests of what is now modern-day Belarus. They trained with small arms and conducted kidnappings and reprisal killings of Nazi soldiers. The movie Defiance starring Daniel Craig was based on this story, and Stern noted it partially inspired Inglourious Basterds.
Stern connected his interest in the Kushner family to his own identity as the Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors. He described American national identity as enabling people to maintain their ethnic identities while subscribing to a broader American "supra tribe" based on the Constitution, individual liberty, and shared values. He expressed concern that this identity has been fraying during his adult life and uses his writing to examine whether the American dream remains viable despite its known flaws.
Stern emphasized that Kushner should not be labeled a VC, noting Kushner would take offense to this characterization. Instead, Kushner functions as a builder and founder with ambitions extending beyond typical venture capital. Stern observed that Kushner doesn't look to other investors for guidance but rather studies founders, similar to how Stern himself doesn't seek profiles that will influence his work but follows his own interests.
Stern admitted he found technology investors' personality types annoying and full of themselves. When seeking his first Colossus subject, he asked who wasn't "full of shit" and was directed to Neil Bar, a friend. This reflects Stern's broader interest in how people think about themselves and their work rather than their public perception.
Kushner sought advice from Rick Rubin during a period when he felt he had "captured magic in a bottle" with Thrive but feared losing it. He recreated the scene with Rubin to ask what he should do if the magic escaped him. Stern recognized this as a particularly Holocaust-family type question—the fear that everything built could be taken away overnight, a deep vulnerability that determined the direction of the profile.
Stern's older brother Josh served as his primary influence growing up. In college, his Russian professor Natalya Shansky became his most significant mentor after he chose Russian to fulfill a language requirement. Stern fell in love with the language, majored in it, and spent a year and a half studying in Russia. Shansky died a few years later, but Stern named his one-year-old daughter after her.
Shansky taught Stern that people with gifts have an obligation to those gifts, and failing to fully develop and share them constitutes sinning against oneself and God. She confronted Stern's college behavior—excessive drinking, drugs, and insufficient focus on work and future—as not merely foolish but as betraying his potential. This perspective transformed how Stern views the subjects he profiles and the people he encounters professionally.
Stern joined the Army after college during the late Obama administration's sequestration period, which created an eight-month gap between signing his contract and basic training. Shansky strongly opposed this decision, viewing it as throwing away the safety and comfort she had fought to provide by escaping the Soviet Union with her infant daughter. During basic training, Stern wrote letters to both his then-girlfriend (now wife) and Shansky. She died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 2015, and Stern preserved all her voicemails from that period.
Stern contrasted entrepreneurs like Zuckerberg, who had a singular idea from youth and pursued nothing else, with those who arrive at building companies or investing later through pursuing genuine interests and relationships. He finds value in both paths but notes the latter often produces people motivated by factors beyond money, with companies emerging as logical endpoints of other pursuits rather than predetermined goals.
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