

Paul Graham ranked No. 11 in Bloomberg Businessweek Top Angel Investors list  - sharpshoot
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/02/0225_angel_investors/12.htm

======
breck
The Bechtolsheim one had some great info.

[http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/02/0225_angel_investors...](http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/02/0225_angel_investors/11.htm)

> 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)."

~~~
alain94040
I'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.

~~~
jimbokun
"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. :)

------
eugenejen
The 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

~~~
paul
How can Ron Conway not be at #1?

~~~
bkudria
There's a detailed table of the rankings:
[http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_t...](http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_tech_2010/)

~~~
wheels
I find that list really dubious -- it's very hard to believe that 97% of Ron
Conway's investments have worked out. The only way I can imagine that being
true is if there are strings pulled so that there's a fire-sale at the end
that's being counted as an exit.

~~~
joshu
97% are "not dead"

I also find this hard to believe.

I've invested in ~ 20 companies over the last four years.

\- Two are insanely good, but no liquidity yet \- One appears to be dead \-
One has been acquired

The rest are in various stages of growth.

~~~
wheels
Right, as Paul pointed out, the numbers for Conway are way low (maybe these
are just the SV Angels numbers?), but over the course of Conway's investments
in the last 20 years, it's astronomically unlikely that 97% of them are "not
dead".

------
joshu
I 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.

~~~
ivankirigin
cdixon is #1 & in nyc

------
aditya
Interesting 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_t...](http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_tech_2010/)

~~~
pg
I 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
2004 onwards was the time frame.

------
johnohara
I 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
They could crowd-source it or pay some mturker.

~~~
ivankirigin
You miss that the point is to get a clickthrough. Bs publishing tactic

------
abstractbill
_The Harvard math PhD..._

I thought pg's PhD was in Computer Science?

~~~
zck
Wikipedia says "Applied Sciences"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham>), but paulgraham.com says Computer
Science (<http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html>).

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Someone contact the Wikipedia people and tell them to update their reference.

~~~
staunch
Someone tell PG to update _his_ page.

~~~
rms
Wikipedians 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
I read staunch's post as a joke -- "obviously Wikipedia is correct, so have pg
fix paulgraham.com to what Wikipedia says".

------
zck
Interesting 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
There's other interesting omissions in that list. Most glaring of all, where's
Vinod Khosla?

~~~
marshallp
Despite 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.

------
ashishbharthi
It would be interesting to get some numbers on YC's returns/investment ratios.

~~~
pg
It 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.

~~~
eru
Strange. I'd expect more accounting and number-crunching.

~~~
pg
There are thing we measure, but not unhatched chickens.

~~~
netcan
Isn't one of the advantages of scaling investing the ability to count
unhatched chickens?

------
yters
What 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.

------
wakeupthedawn
How on Earth is Chris Dixon #1??????

~~~
baguasquirrel
The 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.

------
portman
The 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_t...](http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/future_of_tech_2010/)
[2] <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/younoodle>

~~~
jfarmer
Yes it was.

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b41690396...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039642419_page_2.htm)

