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At ICONIQ, being All-In is not just something we say, it is how we aim to show up every day. We are All-In for the founders we’re grateful to partner with, those exceptional entrepreneurs working to build with conviction, grit, innovation, and a bias toward action. At the same time, we are just as All-In on the incredible leaders within our firm who embody and live those same qualities with how they partner, lead, and serve. Few people represent our values more fully than my partner, Murali Joshi. I believe his depth of care, intellectual honesty, and unwavering founder-first mindset have made him an incredible partner to entrepreneurs and his colleagues alike, while also making him a true force across our platform.
Murali began his career as a founder and a banker, where he learned early that momentum isn’t something you wait for. It’s created by raising your hand, knocking on doors, and pushing forward through uncertainty. We believe that instinct is at the core of how Murali partners with founders today.
Since joining ICONIQ in 2018, Murali has sourced or led more than $5 billion in investments across what we believe are some of the most successful and frontier technology companies of the last decade, including Datadog, Procore, Anthropic, Statsig, DX, Drata, Fivetran, and 1Password. His work spans data infrastructure, cybersecurity, developer tooling, and AI. While Murali has created tremendous scaled success, Murali’s humility shines bright with founders, who talk about how he shows up with urgency, empathy, and a genuine commitment to building long-term partnerships.
As Murali steps into his new role as General Partner, I sat down with him to reflect on the experiences, principles, and lessons that continue to shape how he invests, partners, and leads.
At ICONIQ, we value the “you’ve got to want it” attitude. You have never been shy to cold email since your first job to now reaching out to generational founders. How has that experience growing up shaped not just your investment philosophy, but how you think about the entrepreneurs you back? What patterns do you see in founders who are also "firsts" in their domains?
Growing up in the Bay Area, the energy I felt around technology and entrepreneurship was palpable, with the internet, smartphones and connected devices among other revolutions taking storm. Coming from a family of immigrant engineers and doctors, work ethic wasn’t optional. It shaped the framework for how I invest.
What I’m drawn to in founders is the same mentality I try to live by: bias towards action and lead with humility and tenacity. You see this pattern in founders who are "firsts", this almost irrational optimism paired with deep paranoia. I think some of the best founders, whether it's their first company or seventh, have that hunger. Their passion drives unbounded courage married with a relentless desire to pursue. They are simultaneously convinced they will win and terrified they will miss something critical. This duality helps to create an engine that is customer-obsessed and mission-oriented enabling them to out-work, out-think and out-want the competition.
My own investment philosophy has become: bet on founders who aren’t afraid to take action against the grain. Founders who are often underestimated and use it as fuel. They have something to prove. And they will run through walls.
You have sourced or led over $5 billion in capital across companies like Datadog, Procore, Anthropic, Statsig, DX, Drata, 1Password, and more. When you look at those investments that worked, what's the one non-obvious thing they all had in common that wasn't in the deck?
Irrespective of what stage you partner with a company, I believe the deck or spreadsheet can never fully paint the picture. I have always loved the expression that it is impossible to measure the beauty of a painting based on the number of brushstrokes.
In my view, the best founders have always been Customer Zero for their products. Before they built the company, they experienced the pain so acutely that they couldn't not build the solution. Tooey lived in construction job sites. Dario and team needed to challenge the norms of AI ethics and safety. Abi at DX was a high-schooler turned serial entrepreneur solving DevEx and productivity. Adam at Drata was fighting the pain of compliance and GRC. Vijaye at Statsig championing continuous product experimentation at Facebook/Meta. There are so many more.
This matters because when the market doubts you, and it will, Customer Zero founders do not pivot to chase trends. They double down. They have conviction that comes from scar tissue, not market research.
Underlying all this is what I believe is the most important characteristic: intellectual honesty bordering on self-criticism and skepticism. The maniacal focus to articulate one’s weaknesses better than any competitor. They know exactly where they are vulnerable, which means they are already building the moat and executing before anyone else sees the gap.
You cannot underwrite that in Excel. But once you see it in a founder, it fires you up. Everyone on the team knows that I frequently ask myself one question after each meeting: “would I quit my job and go to war with this founder?”
How did your early experiences as a founder and banker shape the way you approach investing today and what aspects of the work continue to energize and challenge you the most?
As a founder, I learned so many lessons and have never been more humbled. Most startup advice is built on survivorship bias dressed up as wisdom. Having lived through the experience first-hand, it is really hard to build. Finding that first customer to pay you a penny for your services makes you go from pitch deck to building a business. That experience helped me understand the challenges of scaling remotely, finding product market fit, importance of co-founder relationships, unpacking nuances of various business models and more. You also do everything - hiring, customer support, sales, product, finance, even janitorial services. And for a majority of these, it will be your first time. We cannot pretend to understand something. That honesty avoids groupthink and challenges the norms that might find itself in consensus decision making. I believe some of our best investments came from moments where the "obvious" felt imperfect and uneasy.
As a banker, I lived through the polar opposite of my founder's lens. Seeing the ruthlessly focused lens of unit economics, competitive positioning and execution from legendary companies that were in process for their IPO or undergoing large scale multi-billion dollar M&A. It reinforced the idea that strong work ethic and attention to detail necessitate discipline.
What energizes the work most today is still the same thing: finding the founders who should not win on paper but possess an undeniable fire. They may not have the pedigree, but they will not be proven wrong.
We have a motto at ICONIQ, that everything is written in pencil. Conviction matters, but so does the humility to change your mind. Markets change. Technology changes. People change. The same playbook that worked in 2018 will not work in 2025. Continuing to learn is non-negotiable.
Looking back on your journey, what is the most important lesson you've learned so far as a partner to founders and teams?
You can learn from everyone. Every situation, every founder, every colleague is a moment that can help you get just a little better. It only took thousands of meetings with founders over many years to appreciate the nuances that draw some patterns.
I was fortunate at a young age to hear two guiding principles that have shaped me:
“Life is all about the slope, not the intercept”: Never fixate on where someone started, but instead their rate of growth
“The most rewarding jobs are where you marry deep domain and functional expertise”: It does not matter if you are an investor, founder, Stephen Curry, Taylor Swift, or Gordon Ramsay. The most intellectually (and financially) rewarding moments are when you combine these two forces together.
These principles have guided this lesson on how I approach operating with founders and their teams.
Published:
January 14, 2026
