He's a rising star in venture capital. Here's where Iconiq's Ryan Koh says the next great investors will come from.
Iconiq
- Ryan Koh is a principal at Iconiq, where he invests across the firm's growth and venture funds.
- He's pushed Iconiq to invest earlier in the company lifecycle and landed bets on buzzy startups.
- His track record landed Koh a spot on Business Insider's 2026 Rising Stars of Venture Capital list.
Ryan Koh didn't grow up dreaming of becoming a venture capitalist. The job found him instead — at a closing dinner for a company selling to Cisco, when he was still a young investment banker. What struck him was the easy camaraderie between the founders and their venture backers, trading war stories like old friends.
"That was the moment I realized, 'Hey, this is a part I want to contribute to,'' Koh said.
That instinct helped propel Koh onto Business Insider's latest Rising Stars of Venture Capital list.
Today, Koh is a principal at Iconiq, investing across the firm's venture and growth funds with a focus on software. He's built a reputation internally as a dealmaker willing to push Iconiq beyond its traditional comfort zone of growth investing, and he now spearheads the firm's early-stage efforts.
He's helped land bets on companies like Statsig, which OpenAI acquired for $1.1 billion last year, and TinyFish, a startup building virtual agents for businesses. Along the way, Koh's helped invest more than $800 million in capital.
On a soundstage at Business Insider's New York headquarters, we sat down with Koh to talk about his career path, his advice for ambitious young investors, and his bet on where the next great investors will come from.