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Paul Graham ranked No. 11 in Bloomberg Businessweek Top Angel Investors list
- breck 17y agoThe Bechtolsheim one had some great info. http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/02/0225_angel_investors/11.htm http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/02/0225_angel_investors... > As an angel investor, he’s famous for cutting a $100,000 check to Google’s founders even before they had chosen their now-famous name. In an e-mail, Bechtolsheim confirmed that the check has netted him more than $1 billion. > Bechtolsheim also expressed a sober perspective on the emergence of former Google employees as angels and entrepreneurs. "When people are part of a new company that gets very successful very quickly, such as Google (but this effect is by no means limited to Google), they sometimes confuse the root of this success and incorrectly assume that the success was due to their own actions. They then want to translate this experience to other opportunities, either in the same or in related spaces, which in some cases may turn out, but in most cases will fail, just like the majority of all VC investments fail. … The only thing different about the Google mafia compared to other similar periods in history is that more money was made at Google by more people (and more money will be lost here)."
- loganfrederick 17y agoSimilar statements could be made about the PayPal Mafia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
- jfarmer 17y agoExcept ex-PayPal people have been quite successful, by and large. What's the biggest Xoogler success?
- aditya 17y agoProbably Friendfeed
- joshu 17y agoTwitter?
- jfarmer 17y agoThat's technically true, but not quite what I was thinking. Let's define Xooglers as people who were pre-IPO at Google. Or even just people who didn't originally come to Google through the acquisition of another company. How about in that case?
- alain94040 17y agoI'll tell you another story about Andy Bechtolsheim: he invested in a competitor of my startup about 10 years ago, would never give us the time of day when we tried to raise money. We never got to pitch to him, which is unfortunate considering that he was the one angel specialized in our space. Fast forward 5 years, we acquired the company he had invested in. Who you know (or rather, who knows you) matters. We were out of towners at the time.
- marshallp 17y agoSo true, look at the xooglers getting reaquired by the mothership.
- jimbokun 17y ago"Who you know (or rather, who knows you) matters." Yea, if Andy had known you guys well enough to understand that you would kick the other's company's butt and acquire them, he could have just invested in your company directly and got a better return. :)
- johnohara 17y agoI wish these sites would take the time to populate the title attribute for images so you can mouseover and see the name before clicking.
- eru 17y agoThey could crowd-source it or pay some mturker.
- ivankirigin 17y agoYou miss that the point is to get a clickthrough. Bs publishing tactic
- ashishbharthi 17y agoIt would be interesting to get some numbers on YC's returns/investment ratios.
- rms 17y agoNot enough public info to really judge, but anecdotally they're doing very well.
- pg 17y agoIt sure would. But we've been operating such a short time that all the acquisitions so far have been early acquisitions, which are always for small amounts. I'm pretty sure we're ahead on paper, but I've never tried to calculate how far ahead.
- aswanson 17y agoYC is probably two or three intermediate value (35 mm) highly probable acquisitions away from a 100% ROR, assuming 2.58 million invested thus far (129 companies * 20 k avg investment). Between loopt, scribd, jtv, et al they'll easily clear that barrier. This is assuming they're at breakeven now.
- aditya 17y agoInteresting that pg is second only to Ron Conway, in number of investments (I'm guessing this is YCombinator vs. Ron Conway Inc.) 190 vs 129 given that YC has only been doing it for 5 years. EDIT: link to table: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_tech_2010/ http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_t...
- pg 17y agoI don't know where they got that number. The current number is 172. Last June it was 144. The number for Ron also seems wrong. He's made a lot more than 190 investments. He's been doing this since the 1980s.
- sharpshoot 17y ago2004 onwards was the time frame.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- eugenejen 17y agoThe list of top angel investors. No. 1 Chris Dixon, 38 Co-founder, Hunch Chris Dixon’s blog No. of angel investments: 23 Companies funded (a sampling): Skype, Postini, Milo.com, Knewton, DailyBooth No. 2 Ron Conway Investor No. of Angel Investments: 190 Companies funded (a sampling): Google, Facebook, bit.ly, Digg, Mint.com, Twitter No. 3 Reid Hoffman, 42 Chairman, co-founder, LinkedIn Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn profile No. of Angel Investments: 49 Companies funded (a sampling): Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Ning, Zynga No. 4 Esther Dyson, 58 Investor No. of Angel Investments: 60 Companies funded (a sampling): 23andMe, GridPoint, del.icio.us, Flickr, Meetup No.5 Peter Thiel, 42 Founder, President, Clarium Capital Management No. of Angel Investments: 26 Companies funded (a sampling): Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga No. 6 Marc Andreessen, 38 Investor No. of Angel Investments: 53 Companies funded (a sampling): Business Insider, Digg, LinkedIn, Qik, Scribd, Twitter No. 7 Jeff Bezos, 46 Chairman, founder, Amazon.com No. of Angel Investments: 18 Companies funded (a sampling): 37signals, Google, Linden Lab, Social Gaming Network, Twitter No. 8 Chris Sacca, 34 Managing Director, Lowercase Capital No. of Angel Investments: 32 Companies funded (a sampling): bit.ly, FanBridge, Gowalla, Posterous, SimpleGeo, Twitter No. 9 Mike Maples, 42 Investor No. of Angel Investments: 39 Companies funded (a sampling): Circle of Moms, Digg, Kongregate, Odeo, Twitter, Weebly No. 10 Andy Bechtolsheim, 54 Founder, Chairman, Chief Development Officer, Astra Networks No. of Angel Investments: 49 Companies funded (a sampling): Brightmail, Google, Granite Systems, Nvidia, Tapulous No. 11 Paul Graham, 45 Co-founder, Y Combinator No. of Angel Investments: 129 Companies funded (a sampling): Bump Technologies, FanChatter, Heyzap, Justin.tv, Scribd No. 12 Max Levchin, 34 Founder, Chief Executive, Slide No. of Angel Investments: 7 Companies funded (a sampling): Evernote, MixPanel, Raptr, Slide, Yelp No. 13 Aydin Senkut, 40 Founder, Felicis Ventures No. of Angel Investments: 65 Companies funded (a sampling): Foodzie, Mixer Labs, Rapleaf, The Auteurs, TwitVid No. 14 Bill Joy, 55 Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers No. of Angel Investments: 24 Companies funded (a sampling): Blazent, NeoPath Networks, Dantz No. 15 Kevin Rose, 33 Founder, Digg Kevin’s blog No. of Angel Investments: 12 Companies funded (a sampling): Twitter, 3Crowd Technologies, Foursquare, SimpleGeo No. 16 Dave Duffield, 69 Founder, Chief Executive, Workday No. of Angel Investments: 18 Companies funded (a sampling): Acta Technology, Bridgestream, Netcentives No. 17 Andrea Zurek, 39 Founding partner, XG Ventures No. of Angel Investments: 26 Companies funded (a sampling): Lotus Vodka, Facebook, Red Mango, and Vaxart No. 18 Marc Benioff, 44 Founder, Chief Executive, Salesforce.com No. of Angel Investments: 9 Companies funded (a sampling): Mashery, Qik, Tapulous, Zuora No. 19 Jeff Clavier, 42 Founder, Managing Partner, SoftTech VC Blog: Jeff Clavier’s blog, Software Only No. of Angel Investments: 52 Companies funded (a sampling): bit.ly, Circle of Moms, DNAnexus, Mint.com No. 20 Caterina Fake, 36 Co-founder Hunch Caterina’s blog No. of Angel Investments: 6 Companies funded (a sampling): Etsy, Maya’s Mom No. 21 Martin Varsavsky, 49 Founder, Chief Executive, Fon Martin Varsavsky’s blog No. of Angel Investments: 28 Companies funded (a sampling): 23andMe, Dopplr, Eolia, Joost, Plazes, Tumblr, Wikio No. 22 Naval Ravikant, 36 Founder, Chairman, Vast.com Blog: Startup Boy No. of Angel Investments: 21 Companies funded (a sampling): Chatterous, DotSpots, Fluther, Twitter, Vidly No. 23 Joe Kraus, 38 Partner, Google Ventures No. of Angel Investments: 5 Companies funded (a sampling): InfraSearch, Linkedin, Napster, Odeo No. 24 Eric Schmidt, 54 Chairman, Chief Executive, Google No. of Angel Investments: 9 Companies funded (a sampling): Citizen Effect, CX, iShake, PublishOne, Sendmail No. 25 Lauren Flanagan, 55 Co-founder, Managing Director, Phenomenelle Angels Fund No. of Angel Investments: 23 Companies funded (a sampling): Alice.com, Stealth Therapeutics, U.S. Trailmaps
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- joshu 17y agoI think I was interviewed for this article. I guess I forgot how to talk in sound bites. At least I got promoted to exec! I wish the "top" angels had some outside SV diversity; I know two thirds of that group pretty much directly.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ivankirigin 17y agocdixon is #1 & in nyc
- wakeupthedawn 17y agoHow on Earth is Chris Dixon #1??????
- baguasquirrel 17y agoThe cynic in me is thinking that it's because BusinessWeek is based out of NYC. Don't get me wrong though, cdixon's blog is pretty insightful, and it sounds like he's got a good rep.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- zck 17y agoInteresting how pg is the only YC founder listed here. Other than being the most visible face of YC, why is only he on the list?
- baguasquirrel 17y agoThere's other interesting omissions in that list. Most glaring of all, where's Vinod Khosla?
- marshallp 17y agoDespite the number of oriental and south asian people in the valley, how came their are so few of them in vc, never mind blacks or latinos.
- abstractbill 17y agoThe Harvard math PhD... I thought pg's PhD was in Computer Science?
- zck 17y agoWikipedia says "Applied Sciences" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham), but paulgraham.com says Computer Science (http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html).
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoSomeone contact the Wikipedia people and tell them to update their reference.
- staunch 17y agoSomeone tell PG to update his page.
- rms 17y agoWikipedians strongly recommend against that and get annoyed when people do it. Anyone that wants to fix their own mistaken Wikipedia page is best off doing it by posting a link on the talk page with the correct information and letting someone else fix it, or having someone else do it for them.
- zck 17y agoI read staunch's post as a joke -- "obviously Wikipedia is correct, so have pg fix paulgraham.com to what Wikipedia says".
- pg 17y agoYes, CS.
- yters 17y agoWhat tends to be the biggest contributor to angel success? Knowledge, instinct, network, luck? Or impossible to tell? I'm assuming it largely comes down to the type of people (smart, hardworking, get 'er done) in the startup and the angel's network.
- portman 17y agoThe ranking were researched and calculated by YouNoodle. [1] YouNoodle took angel money from Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and The Founders Fund. [2] This conflict-of-interest was not disclosed by BusinessWeek. [1] http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_tech_2010/ http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_t... [2] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/younoodle http://www.crunchbase.com/company/younoodle
- jfarmer 17y agoYes it was. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039642419_page_2.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b41690396...