Continuing My Partnership with ICONIQ on a New Journey
One of the key elements that has made me feel fulfilled in my work has always been a balance between productivity, learning new skills, and most importantly — playfulness.
Playfulness is essential for creativity and for developing new concepts and capabilities.
There is an excellent presentation about this by John Cleese, where he refers to research done by Donald MacKinnon. I highly recommend viewing it.
When I started making a living as a developer in 1999, I was balancing these things well, and feeling unbelievably lucky to be in that position.
Many years later at Twistlock, the company I co-founded and built to a successful acquisition, it felt again like we were doing something meaningful yet balancing it with the right amount of playfulness.
During my first few weeks as a Board Partner to ICONIQ Growth, I have noticed many similar business qualities between ICONIQ Growth and Twistlock, which I believe is making this, yet again, the right place for me.
I grouped these similarities into five areas:
Focus
In late stage venture capital, there are probably a gazillion metrics you can look at, but you need to find your north star, and focus on it, even if it means losing some opportunities on the way. At ICONIQ Growth I noticed that the north star is “if you partner with the best-in-class companies and teams and support them, great things will follow.”
It’s a simple, yet challenging strategy. Exactly what a winning team needs.
Cutting Edge Technology
In 2015, after 14 years of working in Microsoft, going to work in a startup made me understand that cutting edge technologies these days is the intersection of understanding the principles of the past and keeping an open mind to the solutions of the future. I am excited to see that in action once more.
At Twistlock, one of the highlights of my experience was a chance to explore new technologies. When someone asked me if we support some technology which I knew nothing about, I tried sitting down, writing a “hello world” in my own little lab. It’s a little hard to explain why it was fun. I guess it’s the “playful” element again. I have seen ICONIQ Growth invest in a product-first way in companies that are defining the next generation of technology, and I am excited to keep exploring the solutions of our future from a new lab!
Transparency
I am a zealot when it comes to the power of transparency. ICONIQ Growth is a small team of super intelligent folks, there is no set of hierarchical decision making meetings. Investment calls happen fast, whoever did the analysis presents, there is no “meeting before/after the meeting” and we debate the merits. When the team decides to do something, it moves fast with one unified voice. It’s a simple and transparent process. I love it.
Fact Based Passionate People
Values are important to me. When Dima and I thought about defining Twistlock’s values, we wanted to make it clear that we would always put facts first, but not be robotic, so we called it “fact based passionate people.” When I look around the ICONIQ Growth team today, I see these same values manifested in a pursuit of truth with the same passion.
Smarter People Than Yourself
They always tell you as a CEO to “hire people who are smarter than you.” Well, I’m now extending this to “work with people who are smarter than you.” I was not surprised as I had an ICONIQ Board Member and an ICONIQ Board Observer at Twistlock, but everyone here is like that. The best thing is that ICONIQ Growth has also subscribed to this principle and strives to partner with those smarter than them, perpetuating a virtuous cycle and focus!
I plan to revisit these points in a year. It would be interesting to see how my point of view might deepen over time!
So What’s My Plan as an advisor to ICONIQ Growth?
I plan to focus on enterprise software, mostly infrastructure.
I plan to focus on product-focused people chasing exciting markets.
I plan to see how I can help support founders from the other side of the table from my own fortune and plenty of mistakes.
I plan to bring in the “Israeli angle” to the team, both in increasing ICONIQ Growth’s focus in investing in the country and hopefully to introduce Israeli entrepreneurs to ICONIQ Growth as a strong partner in their journey, something I can speak of from personal experience!
