A tech landscape transformed by the pandemic and high-profile IPOs for its beneficiaries means a sea change atop the 20th annual Midas List of the world’s best venture capitalists.
Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the Midas List is the definitive ranking of the top 100 tech investors. At number one for the first time is Sequoia partner Alfred Lin, the former Zappos executive and partner of the late Tony Hsieh, who jumped 31 spots thanks to his firm’s investments in two of 2020’s biggest IPOs – home rental site Airbnb and food delivery service DoorDash. He is one of 14 Midas List members who bet on Airbnb and one of 8 who backed DoorDash, but he’s the only one to serve on the board of directors at both businesses, which went public on consecutive days in December.
Those companies and others, such as Coinbase, Nubank and Snowflake, have propelled a record crop of newcomers onto this year’s list, with 23 making their debut. Another 10 returned to the list after having previously dropped out, meaning more than a third of the 2020 class have left the ranks. Mayer "Micky" Malka, Santi Subotovsky and Nicolas Szekasy are the first three investors from Latin America to make the cut. They’re joined by newcomers like Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson, immigrants from Iran and Spain, making their debuts from Pear VC. Hershenson is one of 12 women to make the list, up from 11 last year and tying 2019’s record but demonstrating how far the VC industry has yet to come.
To qualify, investors are ranked by their portfolio companies that have gone public or been acquired for at least $200 million over the past five years, or that have at least doubled their private valuation since initial investment to $400 million or more over the same period. Forbes and TrueBridge put a premium on liquid exits over unrealized returns, as well as large multiples on money invested for early-stage investors or large sums of cash returned for growth-stage specialists. (Or for top Midas investors: both.) A data-driven list, the Midas List is produced from a combination of public data sources and the submissions of hundreds of investment partners across dozens of firms each year.
Note: Investors who have been fired or resigned from their firms for misconduct are subject to removal from Midas List eligibility.
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