(Bloomberg) – Former Lone Pine Capital Managing Director Mala Gaonkar is drawing talent from industry rivals as he expects to launch his hedge fund early next year with at least $ 1 billion.
He hired 13 employees for his SurgoCap Partners, including staff from Dan Loeb’s Third Point and Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, according to people familiar with the matter. Gaonkar, 52, plans to build his team more before the company’s debut, which is planned for the first quarter.
His five-person investment team includes Anand Krishnamurthy, former head of the financial sector at Maverick who will continue to focus on SurgoCap. John Kaszuba, a 13-year Third Point veteran, will oversee data science and analytics, while Jason Hong, who worked there for nearly a decade before leaving in 2020, will focus on the application of the technology to care companies. health and industrial.
The team also includes Jason Kong, who will focus on private investments and formerly bet on late-stage enterprise software, fintech and consumer technology at growth-equity firm IVP; and Molly Jordan, who will target health care investments. He was previously focused on investment growth at Greenoaks Capital and also worked at TPG.
Gaonkar will be the sole portfolio manager and will make the final investment decisions.
SurgoCap is expected to be one of the biggest upcoming hedge fund launches and among the few to be led by a woman. The fund will invest in publicly traded stocks and be closely held with startups in enterprise data, financial services, industrial, and healthcare and biopharma. A spokesman for New-York-based SurgoCap declined to comment.
The firm’s back-office staff includes Diana Dieckman, former global head of capital introduction at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who will oversee the SurgoCap partnerships. Joining is Chief Operating Officer Colleen Lynch from Coatue Management, where she is general counsel and chief compliance officer. Felix Jimenez, who has worked at Third Point, Millennium Management and Point72 Asset Management, will be chief technology officer.
At the Sohn Investment Conference Thursday, Gaonkar said he is strong at ServiceNow Inc., an enterprise-software company that helps automate workflow. The company has “a significant runway for expansion” because it has only entered 6% of a potential $ 200 billion market, he said. SurgoCap expects ServiceNow to generate $ 6.2 billion of free cash flow by 2026, helping drive shares to $ 820 each, from the current $ 492.22.
Gaonkar was a founding partner of Lone Pine, which debuted in 1998. Three years later, he was named portfolio manager overseeing investments in technology, media, internet and telecommunications, and he also led longtime company funds. In January 2019, he was one of three people to take over the day-to-day leadership after founder Steve Mandel left.
A graduate of Harvard Business School, Gaonkar is a founding trustee of Surgo Ventures, a nonprofit that uses artificial intelligence and behavioral and data science to help find solutions to global health and social problems.
(Updates on Gaonkar’s comments on ServiceNow in the eighth paragraph.)
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