You start to do the calculations manually to avoid overpaying or underpaying your reps, turning an otherwise triumphal moment into a very long night. The spreadsheet your team used to calculate these payouts is riddled with “#REF!” errors and largely unworkable. What should be cause for celebration becomes cause for concern when you realize that you must now calculate commissions payouts for dozens of sales reps based on meticulously crafted compensation plans with complicated accelerators and incentives for multi-year deals. “They promised that they would support founders and they lived up to that and opened their network to us,” says Van der Does.Imagine that you run the sales organization at a company that has just beaten its quarterly sales goal.

At the very least, Iconiq’s ever growing network will likely prove a draw for new startup founders. The billionaires minted from a string of pandemic IPOs potentially has created a new crop of clients for the reclusive family office, which only expanded its website beyond a logo in 2020. “We got them on board because we were a European company with a global product, and now we are being seen as a global company,” says Van der Does. Adyen CEO and cofounder Pieter Van der Does raised an undisclosed amount from Iconiq in 2015. But that same, tight web of relationships might be its greatest selling point to potential founders, which was the case for Adyen. Iconiq’s operations are so sprawling that it has an expansive list of potential conflicts of interest. Iconiq faces competition from both local investors with a larger footprint, and a growing contingent of American investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Pierrepont’s former Accel colleague Luciana Lixandru, who now leads Sequoia Capital’s London office. “You have repeat founders, a more experienced ecosystem, and it creates a very powerful dynamic that we are excited to invest in,” says Jacobson. Only around 10% of Iconiq’s portfolio is based in Europe, but the firm was drawn by a crop of seasoned founders and executives that are starting new companies, says Matthew Jacobson, a general partner with Iconiq Growth. That’s even with the share price of some big Iconiq exits like Datadog down almost 40% from its stock market peak. Its assets under management have exploded from $43 billion in November 2020 to over $80 billion today due to a boom in tech valuations and a number of IPOs during the pandemic. The firm now works with 337 wealthy clients, according to its most recent regulatory filing. Makan began working with Zuckerberg shortly after he moved to Palo Alto, adding a key name to the roster of future Silicon Valley heavyweights that invested with Iconiq. Iconiq was founded in 2011 by former Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley bankers Divesh Makan, Michael Anders and Chad Boeding. Iconiq also holds stakes in Belgian data platform Collibra and London-based fintech Primer. The firm was also a significant early investor in Dutch payments company Adyen, which now has a stock market value of $40 billion. Wolt was acquired for almost 20 times the valuation that Iconiq invested in 2019 when it was acquired by DoorDash in November 2021 for $8.1 billion. It has also seen success with a number of its European investments already.

Iconiq capital salaries