Brian Solomon of Forbes and Rob Price and Meghan Morris of Business Insider have previously chronicled the making of Divesh Makan and ICONIQ in great detail, so I’ll keep it short.ĭivesh Makan was born in South Africa around 1974 and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Natal. In a world where every firm is marketing themselves and their brand, ICONIQ keeps a low profile (in fact, just writing this piece gives me pause, considering their alleged previous efforts to quash a Forbes piece ). Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake, Chamath Palihapitiya, James Murdoch, Satya Nadella, Sarah Friar, Henry Kravis are but just a few of ICONIQ’s clients I picked these names out to stress the plurality of sectors and eminence represented, but at last count this list has over two hundred names of similar influence and cachet. ICONIQ serves a clientele intersecting Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and high finance. Well, it turns out ICONIQ is absolutely unparalleled in one dimension above all : when you take investment from ICONIQ Growth, you can comfortably assume you are accessing one of the most powerful networks in the world. In that time, ICONIQ Growth has muscled their way into hugely competitive deals, often co-investing alongside ‘tier-1’ funds or leading rounds, undoubtedly often securing allocation at the expense of prestigious VC firms from the Valley. ICONIQ raised their first fund to invest in private tech companies in 2013, and is now said to be raising their sixth fund of $3.75 billion, focusing on fintech and enterprise software. Founded in 2011 by Divesh Makan, Michael Anders and Chad Boeding, ICONIQ has now amassed $67 billion in assets under management and expanded beyond the family office into venture capital and real estate. ICONIQ Capital is a family office serving some of the most influential people in Silicon Valley. This is the portfolio of ICONIQ Growth, the venture capital arm of ICONIQ Capital. I’ve clearly omitted several names that can already be reasonably claimed as home-runs, but I hope that illustrates my larger point: this is an incredibly impressive portfolio, even more so when you consider that the firm behind it hasn’t even been around for a decade. When they’re all bunched together it’s easy to gloss over the significance of some of these names, so let’s recite just a few of the notable ones that have crossed over into the public markets. Nikhil Basu Trivedi predicted a bifurcation of venture funds along the dimensions of sector specialism, stage specialism, or being a one-stop destination for your financing needs from inception to ringing the bell at the NASDAQ. Several leading investors have opined on how this all plays out. On the other hand, the biggest winners will turn out to be much larger than the prices people paid for them and this will happen faster than at any time in human history.Ī plausible endgame 5-10 years from now is a further accentuation of the historical stratification of venture returns fewer funds get into the best companies and the rest are overpaying for companies that won’t move the needle for their funds. On the one hand, you’re over paying for every investment and valuations aren’t rational. However, to be a great VC you have to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. What does this mean? Mark Suster weighed in this week.

Iconiq capital san francisco