Our Philosophy
Every era gives birth to new investment strategies. As students and practitioners of the market, we studied their styles.
We have distilled the greatest lessons from various disciplines and their proven strategies into what we believe is the optimal approach.
Founder-led investing focuses on companies led by the most exceptional founders in the world—those who fall within the top 0.1%.
The qualities they bring create an extraordinary culture, resulting in unmatched efficiency, innovation, and growth compared to competitors.
As strategies gain popularity, they become commoditised, reducing their edge and see their returns diminish.
We believe that a fluid yet principled strategy is the key.
I.Explore continuously new insights across industries and asset classes.
II.Execute effective strategies with precision and discipline.
III.Evolve our approach to stay ahead in ever-changing markets.
Our Strategies
Iii
Precision exposure to companies led by the world’s top 0.1% of founders.
iIi
Harnessing blockchain breakthroughs to ignite asymmetric returns.
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Unearthing mis-priced, high-impact special situations in local markets.
What Founders Say
“People have been saying we are overvalued for 20 years. People have been saying our products wouldn’t make us profitable. That we would not be able to become a juggernaut. That we would not become GAAP profitable. That we wouldn’t get on the S&P.
Keep saying that about us. We love it. It discourages people from doing anything like what we’re doing. And we are winning.”
Alex Karp, Founder & CEO Palantir
"I work under the assumption that we have no idea how to build companies yet, and that 50 years from now people will look back at the companies of today and they will seem like the black-and-white footage of the first hockey games. We have no idea how to build the best companies yet. That’s really what I’m preoccupied with."
"Amazon is trying to build an empire, and Shopify is trying to arm the rebels. We’re an army of rebels. This is a role we picked for ourselves."
Tobias Lütke, Founder & CEO Shopify
"MicroStrategy is running a cyber development company, or a cyber REIT, if you will. We realized there were 21 million blocks in cyberspace, each one a Bitcoin, and we’re buying city blocks in cyberspace as fast as we can"
"Just as Rockefeller saw oil as the lifeblood of industry, we see Bitcoin as digital property driving the future of finance."
Michael Saylor, Founder & Chairman Strategy
“We are the anti-economies of scale company. We believe in small teams outperforming large teams, and so given the choice of taking a 200-person business and buffing it up into two smaller ones,
we would much prefer to do that and believe that the benefits are there as opposed to ramming businesses together, firing a bunch of people and moving a bunch of work offshore."
Mark Leonard, Founder & CEO Constellation Software
“If you want to hire the best people, the best people are already doing pretty impressive things. They have their life plans, their picture for what they want to be doing. To figure out a way in which those trajectories align really takes time."
"Our goal definitely isn't to sell Stripe."
Patrick Collison, Founder & CEO Stripe
"In 1996, NVIDIA was 30 days from going out of business, and we had to lay off more than half our staff.
I don't think you can create culture and develop core values during great times.I think it's when the company faces adversity of extraordinary proportions, when there's no reason for the company to survive, when you're looking at incredible odds."
Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO Nvidia
"We designed Electron with production in mind from day one. Scaling a rocket to consistent production is 100 times harder than building the first one."
"Credibility comes with execution. You can have all the flowery videos you want, but at the end of the day, you actually have to just do it and do it well."
Peter Beck, Founder & CEO Rocket Lab
“When we started MercadoLibre, everyone was telling us, ‘This is never going to work in Latin America.’ The conventional wisdom was that people in this region would never trust buying something online. There was no infrastructure for payments, no logistics network for deliveries.
We had to create the entire ecosystem from scratch—logistics, payments, trust mechanisms—and prove that e-commerce could thrive here.”
Marcos Galperin, Founder & CEO MercadoLibre
"Everything I’ve ever built has been something that has been in dozens if not hundreds of sci-fi novels, movies, comics, you name it.
The things that I’m building are mostly a matter of knowing when to take an idea that used to not be feasible, and then say, “hey, it’s finally feasible. We can finally work on it.”
Palmer Luckey, Founder & CEO Anduril, Oculus
Every Penny Invested
At Aknia, skin in the game isn't a philosophy - it's our baseline. Every dollar of the founders' liquid net worth is invested alongside our clients.
Performance | 1 Year | 2 Year | 3 Year | Since inception |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Aknia | 91.9% | 72.4% | 31.9% | 78.5% |
Benchmark (MSCI World) | 5.7% | 13.7% | 8.5% | 12.2% |
Value Add | 86.2% | 58.8% | 23.3% | 66.3% |
