Espen Agdestein


Espen Agdestein is the manager of current Chess World Champion Magnus Carlsen. He is the brother of chess grandmaster and former coach of Magnus Carlsen, Simen Agdestein, and is himself a FIDE master, with a FIDE ranking of 2372.
Espen is one of the co-founders and partners of Idekapital, the largest Venture Capital Fund in Norway. Idekapital manages over NOK 500 million and invests in Norwegian startup companies in need of growth capital. He founded Idekapital together with Anders Brandt, Rune Holen and Kristian Øvsthus.
He is part owner and sits in the board of directors in Magnus Carlsen's company Play Magnus, where Anders Brandt is chairman and Kate Murphy is the CEO. Espen said that "Play Magnus is Magnus Carlsen's tool to bring chess to the world".
Espen has been Carlsen's manager since 2009, and according to an interview in the Norwegian newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad, the job as manager of Magnus Carlsen turned out to be more hectic than Agdestein first expected.
He founded the magazine Art of Taste in 2001 which was later bought by Hjemmet Mortensen in 2006. Espen Agdestein worked as a director at Hjemmet Mortensen from 2006-2009. He quit his job as a director to start working as Magnus Carlsen's manager.