Imran Khan

Imran Khan was born in 1977 in Bangladesh. When he was six months old, he moved with his parents to Dhaka, where his father had secured a new job. Their one-room apartment was on the second floor of the building and had no kitchen. “My mother had to cook at a neighbor’s place, and I can remember standing at the window waiting for her to return,” Khan says.

Every monsoon season, Khan’s neighborhood flooded, with water completely submerging the first floor. He recalls, “The water often brought snakes with it. It was scary, but exciting. We could even fish from our window. Our apartment became an island, and I had to navigate to school in a rowboat. I’m sure to Americans, this environment sounds underprivileged. I didn’t know anything else and so for me it seemed like a perfect upbringing. I had loving parents. We had a home and food. I felt I had all I needed and I was happy.”

Khan’s mother dropped out of high school and gave birth to him when she was 19. His father was the first in his family to have a college degree. His parents agreed that their son’s education was of paramount importance. They could not afford private schooling for him, so their goal was for him to be accepted into one of the prestigious public schools. “This was very important to my mother,” he says. “She was strict about my studies and dedicated a big part of her life to my education. When I was five, I took a test, along with 2,000 other kids, to attend a public school that only accepted 40 students a year. I was one of those kids and I went to the Government Laboratory High School for the next 10 years.”

Khan attended Dhaka College for his higher secondary certificate. While there, he was introduced to debating. “I fell in love with it,” he says. “There are many benefits to debating. It helped me to think critically, and you understand different vantage points because when you debate you don’t get to choose which side you argue. Our school didn’t have a debate team, so I started a club. In Bangladesh, there is a debate federation that has a competition once a year between all the debate clubs. We entered and our team won the national championship.”

When it came time to apply for college, Khan’s father encouraged him to go to America for his education. Wanting to please his father, Khan went to an internet café and looked up a list of American colleges. He applied to and was accepted at several schools, but he chose the University of Denver (UD) because he liked the brochure photos of the campus.

Khan’s first impressions after landing in Denver was a recognition of space. “Bangladesh is teeming with people,” he says. “You can’t get away from it. But the wide-open spaces of Colorado nearly overwhelmed me.”

During his sophomore year, Khan took a finance class and was fascinated. “This was the first time I heard about Wall Street,” he says. “At that time in Bangladesh, we had no stock market. I was fascinated with all of it and knew that’s what I wanted to pursue.”

Khan needed to find an internship and soon discovered that Wall Street firms did not recruit from the University of Denver. “This was in 1998,” he recalls. “I went to the career center, where they had big black binders of UD alumni. I looked up which ones were working on Wall Street. I wrote to more than 100 people and surprisingly, I got an internship.”

Khan’s internship was with Furman Selz, which later became ING Group. “I worked long days and a few all-nighters that summer. It was tough, but I was happy to have a job. It was a great opportunity.”

Khan completed his degree in finance in 2000, and then returned to New York, where his internship turned into a full-time position.

Imran Khan’s business career includes high-impact roles in global tech and finance, where he became known for orchestrating some of the largest IPOs in history and shaping the strategic direction of major Silicon Valley companies.

Khan’s first position ended in 2001, during the massive layoffs that took place during the telecom bubble. “About 80 percent of my analyst class lost their jobs,” he says. “I was on an H1B visa and had limited time to find another job. My lifeline came from Mike Petrycki, a former ING executive, who offered me a position at his new research firm.”

In 2002, Khan saw the internet as a huge, untapped opportunity. By day, he was a software associate; by night, he covered Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay. Those companies were trading at historic lows. In 2004, he joined JPMorgan as their lead internet analyst. At the age of 29, he was one of the youngest managing directors on Wall Street.

In 2006, Khan recognized a potential in China’s internet market. In 2010, Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba, asked Khan to advise the company. At the same time, he joined Credit Suisse to lead their Global Internet Investment Banking division. From 2011 to 2014, he led Alibaba’s landmark financings, including their $25 billion IPO—the largest in U.S. history.

In 2014, the founder of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, asked Khan to help him build the company. When Khan became the chief strategy officer, the company had fewer than 100 employees. He helped grow it to more than 3,000, and Snap, Inc. from zero revenue to $1.6 billion. The company went public in 2017. Along the way, Adweek named Khan one of the Most Indispensable Executives in Marketing, Media and Tech.

In 2018, Khan achieved a lifelong dream of starting his own company, Proem Asset Management, a long-short equity fund focused on public tech stocks. In addition to founding this company, he serves as its chair of the Investment Committee. “I started Proem because at this point in my career, I wanted to go back to investing. I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. I’m helping young startups to get established. It’s exciting.”

Looking back over his career, Khan is grateful for all the people who helped him reach the next level. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the kindness of others along the way,” he says. “Even back to my college days when friends’ families invited me over for Thanksgiving, which gave me a place to stay over the holiday and taught me firsthand the American spirit of giving. At every step, I’ve had help from friends, professors, and work associates, which reminds me that success is rarely a solo act.”

Khan is often asked for career advice. He says, “Gaining experience is an important part of reaching for success, but I also think experience can be a liability because it doesn’t let you think out of the box. I think curiosity has played a big role in my career trajectory. It allowed me to be at the beginning of so many burgeoning industries. Was I taking risks to go from one steady job to a startup whose path forward was not guaranteed? I guess that’s where grit comes into it.”

When he considers Horatio Alger Scholars, his advice goes in two directions. The first concerns education. “I hope the Scholars embrace their education. Their major is not as important as learning to think critically. That’s what has been most helpful to me. The world is becoming increasingly automated, so critical thinking, innovation, and ideas will be more important to our future than ever before.”

Adversity is another idea Khan believes Scholars should embrace. “I think adversity builds character. We cannot control adversity. I’ve had many challenges in my life, but I don’t waste my time thinking about them or trying to solve them. Every day is a new day, and I live for the new day.