Iconiq Capital

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Iconiq Capital does not disclose its clients. That silence covers a roster that includes Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey, Tom Hanks, and Ryan Reynolds. The firm was founded in December 2011 in San Francisco. It has no public profile and is known within investment management primarily for its secrecy. How did three advisors who left a large bank end up at the center of Silicon Valley's wealth? And what does a firm like Iconiq offer that a traditional investment bank cannot?

• 2. The Facebook Connection

  ›

  Divesh Makan spent the early part of his career as a wealth advisor at Goldman Sachs, then at Morgan Stanley. During the early 2000s, he built relationships with key figures inside Facebook while the company was still a start-up. His first client among them was Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook. Zuckerberg then introduced Makan to Sheryl Sandberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Sandberg would later become Facebook's chief operating officer. Moskovitz went on to co-found Asana. Makan's colleagues at Morgan Stanley in those years were Michael Anders and Chad Boeding. The three developed disagreements with their employers' senior leadership over how business should be conducted. Those tensions came to a head when the three decided to leave. They acted on that decision in late 2011.

• 3. Breaking From the Bank

  ›

  In May 2012, Facebook's initial public offering placed Iconiq in an unusual position. That offering was managed by Morgan Stanley, the bank that Makan, Anders, and Boeding had left just months earlier. They had left to serve as independent wealth advisors with more autonomy over how they operated. Iconiq was not involved in the offering itself. The firm had been built for a different purpose. Iconiq's role was to manage private wealth accumulated during a company's rise, not to handle the public transaction that follows. In 2018, Chad Boeding departed Iconiq to start his own wealth advisory firm, called Epiq Capital.

• 4. How Iconiq Works

  ›

  The Canadian pension fund CPP Investment Board is among Iconiq's institutional clients. Most of Iconiq's business, though, centers on individual wealth management for ultra-high-net-worth clients. The firm functions as a hybrid family office, combining financial advisory with direct investment management. A conventional family office typically handles advice and outsources the investing; Iconiq does both under one structure. That design was deliberate. The dual structure was built specifically to reduce conflicts of interest between the advisory arm and the investment platform. Clients from technology, high finance, and entertainment can choose, at their own discretion, to pool their capital into Iconiq's private investment vehicles. The majority of the firm's assets under management derive from individual wealth management rather than the institutional side. Private equity, venture capital, growth equity, and real estate all sit within the investment platform.

• 5. A Roster in the Shadows

  ›

  Adam D'Angelo served as Facebook's chief technology officer before co-founding Quora. He is one of many from the early Facebook orbit who have affiliated themselves with Iconiq. Sean Parker co-founded Napster and became Facebook's first president. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, later founded Social Capital. Naomi Gleit serves as Meta's vice president of product and social impact. Chris Hughes co-founded Facebook. Outside that orbit, the firm's clients include Henry Kravis of KKR, David Bonderman of TPG, and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. Sean Rad co-founded Tinder. Mike Krieger co-founded Instagram. The entertainment side of the client list includes Ashton Kutcher, J.J. Abrams, Justin Timberlake, Blake Lively, Quincy Jones, and Will Smith. Iconiq does not officially name any of them. The clients themselves have publicly affiliated with the firm, which is the only reason their connections to Iconiq are known. Justin Rosenstein, another co-founder of Asana, also appears on the client list.

• 6. Growth, Impact, and Portfolio

  ›

  Dave Goldberg encouraged Iconiq to pursue growth capital investing, and in 2013 the firm launched Iconiq Growth to do exactly that. Will Griffith, who was at that point a general partner at the venture capital firm TCV, was brought in to lead it. The growth arm gave Iconiq a direct stake in private companies that had not yet gone public. The portfolio that emerged includes Airbnb, Zoom, Snowflake, CrowdStrike, Uber, DocuSign, Datadog, Robinhood, Epic Games, GitLab, and Dropbox, among others. In 2019, Iconiq added a philanthropic arm called Iconiq Impact, designed to give away capital earned through the family office. The charitable platform operated separately from the investment and advisory businesses. In 2020, Blue Owl Capital acquired a 6% stake in Iconiq. The firm that Makan, Anders, and Boeding built now held stakes in companies ranging from Epic Games and Robinhood to Wolt and Adyen.