Oct 4, 2026 · 1h 8m
How profiles turn tech founders into historical figures
How Mark Zuckerberg, Palmer Luckey, Josh Kushner & Scott Wu Think | Jeremy Stern
Jeremy Stein’s reporting examines how ambition, family history, mentorship, and responsibility shape the people directing technology and capital.
- 1Stein frames Mark Zuckerberg’s AI ambitions through imperial history, personal competitiveness, and Meta’s extraordinary distribution advantage.
- 2His profiles seek to render complicated lives rather than extract tidy lessons, using narrative craft to explain technology’s central figures.
- 3Stories about Scott Wu and Josh Kushner show how talent, family history, mentorship, and independence complicate the founder archetype.
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Stein explains how Natalia Lashanskaya’s belief that gifts create obligations changed his path and shaped how he sees the people he profiles.
The brief
Jeremy Stein explains how his profile of Mark Zuckerberg grew from questions about social media, censorship, and power, then widened into a portrait of imperial ambition and AI strategy.
Zuckerberg’s competitiveness, Roman interests, and Meta’s distribution reach become a study in how technological power can resemble an empire—especially when succession and excess enter the frame.
Stein describes a reporting method built around finding the person whose life illuminates a question, then rendering that life without reducing it to advice for the reader.
Scott Wu emerges as a contrasting kind of competitor: technically formidable, unusually direct, and determined to preserve independence while leading an AI company.
The Josh Kushner profile leads from a small anecdote to the Kushner family’s real-estate history, survival, and the obligations created by gifts and mentorship.
Books & mentions
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