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Top 100 Venture Capitalists: List from The New York Times and CB Insights

a photo of a faceless man in a business suit pointing to a dollar sign beside the written words "Top 100 Venture Capitalists"

CB Insights, a venture capital (VC) database, worked with The New York Times for the second year in a row to help rank the top 100 venture capitalists. Using CB Insights’ Investor Mosaic algorithm, the partnership gathered data from “The Cruncher”—a machine learning technology that does algorithmic ranking—along with thousands of firm submissions determined the top VC companies from all over the world. These top 100 venture capitalists helped kick-start and boost many growing businesses bound to create bold impacts in various industries.

By definition, venture capital means the money invested in new and growing businesses often characterized by a substantial amount of risk. However, these businesses push through due to long-term growth potential demonstrated by high revenue, high employee growth, or a combination of both. Most of the time, VC funding comes from financial institutions, investment banks and well-off businesspeople—known as investors.

Factors Considered in the List of Top 100 Venture Capitalists

CB Insights’ Investor Mosaic, which determines private company performance, gets funding from the National Science Foundation. The Mosaic gives “predictive intelligence” in regard to company health, akin to a FICO or credit score. This system they have created considers many—albeit high-level—factors, including:

  • An investor’s exits, pertaining to the size and stage of their entry
  • Their connectivity to other investors—that is, similar to how Google Pagerank works
  • The frequency, size and stage of their entry in un-exited companies with high value
  • How recent their performance was—this focus is only as far back as 2008 (meaning these are the top ranking VCs of today and not the best VCs of all time)

Top 10 Movers and Shakers (or the Best Among the Top 100 Venture Capitalists)

Among the top-ranking and notable movers of 2017 are Brian Singerman of Founders Fund at No. 5 and Ravi Mhatre of Lightspeed Venture Partners at No. 6. The former moved up the list of Top 100 venture capitalists just after Founders Fund acquired Stemcentrx for around $10.2 billion. The latter moved up after creating three M&A and IPO exits worth well over $1 billion each, namely AppDynamics, MuleSoft, and Nutanix since the previous year (September 2016).

Most, if not all, of the top 100 venture capitalists have at least one co-investor. Here are the top 10 rankings:

1. Bill Gurley, Benchmark

Benchmark focuses on many early-stage investments in various markets, including communications, enterprise software and services, semiconductors, security, mobile computing, financial services, and consumer services. Based in San Francisco, California, the firm invests in the range of $100,000 to $15 million. Notable recent investments include Domo, Wealthfront, The Pill Club, Bugsnag (with Google Ventures and Matrix Partners), and Timescale. Gurley is a general partner in the company, often listed on the Forbes Midas List, Forbes Magazine’s annual ranking of the best high-tech and life science VCs.

2. Chris Sacca, Lowercase Capital

Lowercase Capital, headed by Sacca, invests in many startups as well as acquires several later-stage companies. The company often also advises businesses regarding strategy and execution. Based in Hermosa Beach, California, Lowercase’s notable recent investments are Tala, Viro Media, WaveDash, Predictive Talent, and Smash.gg—among others.

3. Jeffrey Jordan, Andreessen Horowitz

The Silicon Valley-based major VC firm has $4.2 billion under management. A household name, Andreessen Horowitz has $4.2 billion under management and invests in various companies ranging from seed to growth, with the most recent ones including: uBeam, Descript (no co-investors), dYdX Trading, Usermind, and Cumulus Networks (along with various co-investors including Sequoia Capital).

4. Alfred Lin, Sequoia Capital

Based in Menlo Park, California, Sequoia is a global VC firm with offices located in the U.S., India, China and Israel. Founded in 1972 by Don Valentine, Sequoia’s most recent investments include Rappi (no co-investors), Uber (along with three other co-investors), Cumulus Networks (along with various co-investors including Andreessen Horowitz), Kahuna, and Front—among others.

5. Brian Singerman, Founders Fund

Another VC firm based in San Francisco, Founders Fund was created by Peter Thiel and Ken Howery in 2005. As one of the top movers in this year’s rankings, the company has helped fund Niantic [the company behind augmented reality (AR) sensation Pokemon Go], Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Yass (no co-investors), Affirm, and SmithRx. Notably, Singerman is a former Google employee, who eventually founded the angel fund company, XGYC Fund. His largest investment, Stemcentrx, was eventually acquired by AbbVie, thus becoming the largest portfolio exit in Founders Fund history at $10.2 billion.

6. Ravi Mhatre, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Another Menlo Park-based VC firm, Lightspeed focuses on accelerating disruptive trends and innovations in the Consumer and Enterprise sectors, helping build over 200 companies all over the world. Some of its more recent notable investments include Affirm, Girlboss Media, Daily Harvest (co-invested by celebrity chef Bobby Flay, actress Haylie Duff, band M13, athlete Shaun White, and VC firm VMG Partners), Ladder, and Dremio. Mhatre is a founding partner of Lightspeed and is also the co-owner of Mhatre Investments LP.

7. Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital

Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, First Round Capital is a VC firm that focuses on pre-revenue and previously unfunded companies. It also has offices in San Francisco. Some of the company’s notable recent investments are Kindred Systems, Nimble Pharmacy, Health IQ (along with various co-investors including Andreessen Horowitz), PacketZoom, and Uplevel Security (no co-investors). Kopelman is the founder of Half.com, which he sold to eBay in 2000.

8 Peter Fenton, Benchmark

Also a general partner at the aforementioned Benchmark, Fenton is also often part of the Forbes Midas—most recently ranked No. 2 in 2015. In 2014, he received TechCrunch’s Crunchie award for Venture Capitalist of the Year. Later the same year, his two investments New Relic and Hortonworks went public the same day. He currently serves on the board of tech giants Twitter and Yelp—among many others.

9. Nanpeng (Neil) Shen, Sequoia Capital (China)

Serving as the China arm of the world-famous funding source for many startups in the country, Sequoia Capital China is based in Beijing. Some of the company’s most recent investments include Tianjishuju, Ziroom, Snow, Xianfengshuiguo (no co-investors), and XtalPi (along with Google and Tencent Holdings). Markedly, Shen is the founding and managing partner of Sequoia’s China branch but has previously established himself as the co-founder and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Ctrip.com—a travel site based in China.

10. Steve Anderson, Baseline Ventures

Baseline is a VC firm based in San Francisco and specializes in seed-stage investments in the area. It was founded by Anderson, who also serves as the company’s Managing Partner. Some of Baseline’s most recent notable investments are Backplane, Sendwithus, PacketZoom, nWay, and CircleCI. It should be noted that Anderson was also Instagram’s first investor and has been part of the Midas List for years.

a photo with the names or logos of ten companies included in the list of Top 100 Venture Capitalists written in white in a blue background
Without a doubt, the top 100 venture capitalists helped kick-start and boost many growing businesses globally!

The Rest of the Top 100 Venture Capitalists of 2017

There are many astounding venture capitalists willing to invest in ideas that are truly worth financing and support. Here are the remaining 90 of the top 100 venture capitalists of the past year based on CB Insights Investor Mosaic algorithm:

  1. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
  2. Kirsten Green, Forerunner Ventures
  3. Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners
  4. Neeraj Agrawal, Battery Ventures
  5. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital
  6. Danny Rimer, Index Ventures
  7. Aydin Senkut, Felicis Ventures
  8. Asheem Chandna, Greylock Partners
  9. Mitch Lasky, Benchmark
  10. Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
  11. Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital
  12. Peter Thiel, Founders Fund
  13. Michael Maples, Jr., Floodgate
  14. Nabeel Hyatt, Spark Capital
  15. Rebecca Lynn, Canvas Ventures
  16. Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz
  17. Matt Cohler, Benchmark
  18. Ping Li, Accel
  19. Scott Sandell, New Enterprise Associates
  20. Salil Deshpande, Bain Capital Ventures
  21. David Sze, Greylock Partners
  22. Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
  23. Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital
  24. Jenny Lee, GGV Capital
  25. Bradley Feld, Foundry Group
  26. Sameer Gandhi, Accel
  27. Bryan Roberts, Venrock
  28. Douglas Leone, Sequoia Capital
  29. Promod Haque, Norwest Venture Partners
  30. Josh Stein, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
  31. Sandy Miller, Institutional Venture Partners
  32. Carl Gordon, OrbiMed Advisors
  33. Ted Schlein, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
  34. Randy Glein, DFJ Growth
  35. Ryan Sweeney, Accel
  36. Byron Deeter, Bessemer Venture Partners
  37. Navin Chaddha, Mayfield Fund
  38. George Zachary, CRV
  39. Mike Volpi, Index Ventures
  40. Michael Dearing, Harrison Metal
  41. Jeremy Levine, Bessemer Venture Partners
  42. Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners
  43. Hemant Taneja, General Catalyst
  44. Jim Breyer, Breyer Capital
  45. David Pakman, Venrock
  46. Satish Dharmaraj, Redpoint Ventures
  47. Yuri Milner, DST Global
  48. Rich Wong, Accel
  49. Stuart Peterson, Artis Ventures
  50. Robert Nelsen, ARCH Venture Partners
  51. Mamoon Hamid, Social Capital
  52. Shervin Pishevar, Sherpa Capital
  53. David Weiden, Khosla Ventures
  54. Aneel Bhusri, Greylock Partners
  55. Andrew Braccia, Accel
  56. Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
  57. Gordon Ritter, Emergence Capital Partners
  58. Keith Rabois, Khosla Ventures
  59. Matt Murphy, Menlo Ventures
  60. Ann Winblad, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
  61. Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures
  62. Ann Lamont, Oak HC/FT
  63. Matt McIlwain, Madrona Venture Group
  64. Beth Seidenberg, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
  65. David Cowan, Bessemer Venture Partners
  66. Hans Tung, GGV Capital
  67. Related image, Tony Florence, New Enterprise Associates
  68. Daniel Ciporin, Canaan Partners
  69. Related image, Young Guo, IDG Capital Partners
  70. Charles Moldow, Foundation Capital
  71. Jon Callaghan, True Ventures
  72. Hurst Lin, DCM Ventures
  73. Jeff Crowe, Norwest Venture Partners
  74. John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
  75. Rob Hayes, First Round Capital
  76. Joel Cutler, General Catalyst Partners
  77. Scott Friend, Bain Capital Ventures
  78. Amish Jani, FirstMark Capital
  79. Rory O’Driscoll, Scale Venture Partners
  80. Bryan Schreier, Sequoia Capital
  81. Gaurav Garg, Wing Venture Capital
  82. David Chao, DCM Ventures
  83. Jonathan Silverstein, OrbiMed Advisors
  84. Joe Lonsdale, 8VC
  85. Amir Nashat, Polaris Partners
  86. Venky Ganesan, Menlo Ventures
  87. Todd Chaffee, Institutional Venture Partners
  88. Kevin Comolli, Accel
  89. Woody Marshall, TCV
  90. Niklas Zennström, Atomico

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