
OpenGov Got Seat at White House Roundtable and Is Part-Owned by Kushner Family - masondixon
https://www.wsj.com/articles/startup-that-got-a-seat-at-white-house-roundtable-is-part-owned-by-kushner-family-1500045800
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abhv
Which 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.

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basseq
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?

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whatupmd
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism))

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masondixon
I think this is called hustle, is it not?

Is this not proof the media is losing touch with reality...

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coltonv
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.

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avisser
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.

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modarts
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.

