Mark Kingdon founded Kingdon Capital Management in 1983. "I knew I wanted to get into this business from the time I was thirteen, when I was given a couple of shares of stock," says Mark Kingdon. "Even though the market nose-dived soon thereafter, I was taken with the idea that you could buy something that made money and then go out and do something else during the day. That seemed like a wonderful way to make a living." Those couple stocks changed everything. By high school, Mark Kingdon was authoring an investment newsletter. Mark Kingdon went on to attend Columbia College and then Harvard Business School. After graduation, he went to work for AT&T in the company's pension fund administration, a post he figured would expose him to a variety of investment outfits. In 1975, he joined Century Capital Associates. He stayed there for eight years before opening Kingdon Capital Management in 1983.

Kingdon Capital Management uses a top-down approach to selecting the economies and industries it will invest in, applies fundamental and technical analysis, then uses a bottom-up approach to picking its stocks. The strategy has been very successful for Kingdon Capital Management. From its inception to 2011, Kingdon Capital Management had an annualized return of 16.6%. Mark Kingdon is modest about his firm's success, saying, "It's important not to confuse investment genius with a bull market."