Alicorn: A journey towards independence and innovation

Alicorn Global Ventures (AVP), today announced the successful spin-off from its Sydney-headquartered parent company, Arowana International, into an independent entity, after scaling up the business in the venture capital space.

Alicorn Venture Partners, originally founded as the venture capital arm of Arowana in 2019, has achieved solid growth and recognition within the investment landscape. The firm’s strategy has leveraged a unique skillset in the secondaries market borne from Alex’s experiences in the field to invest in an access and risk-optimised manner into venture capital-backed technology companies. Alicorn’s first fund, Israel Late Growth Secondaries I (ILGS I), which invested from September 2019 to 2021 focused heavily on the Israeli market Ben Weiss had built an extensive ecosystem in through his two-decade investment career. ILGS I built a track record and reputable brand for Alicorn in the nascent space.

Alexander Assim, Managing Partner at Alicorn, reflected on the firm’s growth journey, stating, “Very few people had heard of secondary VC opportunities in 2018, far less a fund devoted to that activity. Arowana noticed and executed on this strategy and supported the growth of the business as Alicorn took its initial steps in that marketplace. Without that early support, in what has now become a non-core area for Arowana, we would not be in the situation where we are today. We are more convinced than ever of the opportunities in the secondary venture space, which is now worth over $150 billion. Alicorn now has an enormous and timely market opportunity to exploit and the entire Alicorn team is looking forward to executing on this.”

Alicorn’s senior management believe this is a momentous step towards the firms’ next era of growth building a sector-defining asset manager. We at Alicorn are grateful for the support from Arowana since inception, and are looking forward immensely to our next chapter of growth.