Addepar's Software for the Super-Rich

About nine years ago, Joe Lonsdale started working at Clarium Capital Management, the hedge fund of billionaire technology investor Peter Thiel. Lonsdale was fresh out of Stanford University and had little practical experience in finance, but found himself consulting on Thiel’s early investment in Facebook and overseeing projects for Clarium’s other holdings. On the side he dabbled with a handful of his own ventures—a restaurant, a Nascar magazine, and an outfit that built software for spies.

Now 30, Lonsdale remains a tireless overachiever. The spy software company he co-founded, Palantir Technologies, just closed a funding round that valued it at $4 billion. Along with a handful of other partners, last year Lonsdale launched a venture capital firm, Formation 8. Meanwhile, he’s chairman of Backplane, a social network backed by Lady Gaga. Oh, and he’s also running a new company called Addepar that’s attempting to modernize the software that ultrawealthy families and foundations use to manage their billions. “I work 110-hour weeks,” he says. “I’m always investing and building things at the same time.”