According to a report by Bloomberg, real estate startup Cadre—which is famously (or infamously) backed by White House senior advisor Jared Kushner—has parted ways with a senior executive on its investment team.
Anonymous sources close to the matter report that Tom Stults, one of Cadre’s managing directors for investments, left the startup in the past few weeks. Stults joined Cadre’s investment team in 2015 following stints at Goldman Sachs and the Baupost Group. Both a Cadre spokesman and Stults himself have declined to comment, and Stults is still listed on the company website.
The same inside sources indicate that Sam Mischner, Cadre’s chief commercial officer who joined the startup in January, will take over leadership of Stults’ former investment team while Stults remains as a consultant.
Stults’ departure comes on the heels of other major senior staff exits. One of Stults’ colleagues on the investments team, managing director Connor Lewis, left Cadre in March to join KKR & Co. Human resources executive Elizabeth Hall followed in April, joining marketing startup Splash.
Despite its innovative platform to facilitate investments in commercial property, Cadre has come under intense scrutiny over the past two years thanks to its connections to the Kushner family: Jared Kushner and his venture capitalist brother Josh are two of Cadre’s co-founders. Jared Kushner maintains an estimated $50 million stake in the firm alongside Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, and the startup’s offices are in a Kushner-owned building.
In recent months, Cadre’s chief executive officer and third co-founder Ryan Williams has sought to downplay his company’s connection to the Kushners. Speaking with Forbes Magazine in January, Williams said: “I would be lying if I said the political angle wasn’t frustrating or concerning. There are people who won’t work with us, and we get that. But we have over 80 investors in the company. Jared is a passive investor who has no operational control.”
The news of Stults’ departure comes as major media outlets reports that Cadre has received $90 million in foreign funding from unknown overseas investors since 2017 when Kushner became senior advisor to his father-in-law President Trump, prompting allegations of conflicts of interest and ethics violations on Kushner’s part.
