Short answers, pulled from the story.
Divesh Makan, Michael Anders, and Chad Boeding established Iconiq in December 2011 within San Francisco. The trio had previously served as wealth advisors at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley before departing to operate independently.
Divesh Makan cultivated relationships with key members of social media start-up Facebook during the early 2000s including Mark Zuckerberg who introduced him to Sheryl Sandberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Select individuals affiliated with the firm include Adam D'Angelo former Facebook CTO Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz both former Facebook cofounders.
ICONIQ launched just before Facebook held its initial public offering in May 2012 while Morgan Stanley oversaw that public listing. The timing allowed the firm to seek autonomy from traditional banking structures immediately following the major financial event.
The firm expanded beyond basic wealth management into venture capital and growth equity by 2013 when Dave Goldberg encouraged the creation of Iconiq Growth. By 2019 the company added Iconiq Impact as a separate philanthropic platform to distribute capital earned through their family office operations.
Blue Owl Capital acquired a minority stake in the organization during 2020 taking a 6% ownership position in the San Francisco-based entity. This acquisition occurred after Chad Boeding spun out of Iconiq in 2018 to form his own firm called Epiq Capital.