How Mark Zuckerberg, Palmer Luckey, Josh Kushner & Scott Wu Think | Jeremy Stern

Jeremy Stern, a long-form profile writer for Colossus, shares insights into his process of writing in-depth profiles of major tech entrepreneurs and investors. He describes how his Zuckerberg profile came about after initial skepticism—Zuckerberg's team reached out despite Stern's previous critical profile of Palmer Luckey that cast Zuckerberg as an antagonist. Stern spent five to six months on the piece, interviewing nearly 40 people, and gradually discovered that Zuckerberg's lifelong fascination with Augustus and Roman history was more significant than surface-level interpretations suggested.

Stern explains his methodology: he typically begins with a theme or question he's interested in exploring, then finds the right person to use as a vehicle for that exploration. For the Zuckerberg piece, he was interested in examining whether Zuckerberg was overexposed or underexplored, ultimately concluding that while extensively covered, his internal thinking about product building and company creation remains largely unknown. Stern contrasts this with guest Jeremy's interest in those exact operational details, highlighting different approaches to profiling.

On his Palmer Luckey profile—his first ever person profile—Stern started with a question about whether defense technology actually works, prompted by observing the October 7th attack on Israel and the Ukraine conflict. The piece evolved into a cradle-to-grave biography exploring Luckey's willingness to support Trump when it cost him everything (his position at Facebook/Meta), which Stern saw as evidence of genuine integrity rather than calculated image management.

For the Scott Wu profile, Stern took an unconventional approach, using more direct transcript rather than third-person narrative. He was seeking a major AI figure who wasn't grating or self-aggrandizing—someone who could be trusted with transformative technology. Wu stood out for his lack of media training, authenticity, and genuine introspection. Stern notes Wu's ruthless competitiveness extends beyond business into every domain (the Michael Jordan comparison).

On Josh Kushner, Stern began with longstanding interest in the Kushner family dating back before their Trump-era prominence. He was drawn to their Holocaust survival story—how the grandmother escaped the Belsky partisans in Eastern Europe and eventually built a family dynasty. Stern, himself a Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors, was interested in checking the current state of the American dream through these figures. He describes a pivotal moment where Kushner asked Rick Rubin what happens if he loses his magic, which Stern interprets as a specifically Holocaust-family fear of having everything stripped away overnight.

Stern discusses his own formative mentor relationship with Natalia Lashonskaya, his Russian professor, who taught him that having a gift creates an obligation to that gift—that failing to exploit it is sinning against oneself. This philosophy now shapes how he approaches writing about other people and their potential.

On Zuckerberg specifically, Stern notes that while Zuckerberg may seem like he's behind in AI, his actual competitive advantages are formidable: a global user base of billions across Meta's platforms, infrastructure built over 20 years through boring municipal contracts and tax negotiations, and the ability to deploy AI to his existing user base. Stern contrasts Zuckerberg's ideological coherence about Meta being a business (not humanity's salvation) with AI lab leaders who overestimate their companies' historical importance.

Stern resists the suggestion that his profile writing changes his own thinking, noting instead that he's fascinated by the craft of storytelling and understanding individual human lives rather than extracting lessons for personal application. He frames his interest in tech founders as stemming from their current centrality to American life and global futures, not from intrinsic interest in technology itself.