Five years after climbing aboard as data partner for the Forbes Midas List, it’s more challenging than ever to determine tech’s winning venture investors. In a hot market like that of the past five years, the bar rises a little higher and the competition gets a little steeper with each passing List. And at the end of the day, outside the Midas walls, there remain countless investors who are also rockstars of the venture industry.
Enter the Midas Brink List.
Each year, the TrueBridge team selects a handful of investors who we believe will rise in the ranks, all from a range of ages, specialties, and backgrounds (including several VCs new to both investing and tech).
As we keep our ears to the ground and meet year-round with the people who know best – venture investors and entrepreneurs alike – we’re confident that the names we’ve listed here are ones to remember. In fact, you might recognize six Brink Listers from prior years on yesterday’s published Midas List—more breakthroughs than any single Midas List to date.
Here are nine VCs on the brink today, all with potential to be future Midas winners.
Ronny Conway, A Capital
As the son of legendary angel investor Ron Conway, Ronny was essentially born into the venture investment world. But that’s not why he’s one of the most well-connected investors in Silicon Valley. After winding his way through the Google campus, from direct sales to new business development and finally to Google Ventures, Ronny arrived at Andreessen Horowitz in 2009 as its first outside partner. While there, Ronny took charge of the firm’s seed investment program and is credited for introducing Andreessen Horowitz to Instagram, later acquired by Facebook for $1.0 billion. Now at the helm of his own ship (early stage venture firm A Capital), Ronny is building on a lifetime of venture knowledge with investments in the product management platform Wizeline, the real-time Net Promoter Score and audience feedback tracker Delighted, and PS Dept., the fashion support team making virtual shopping more enjoyable for everyone. In addition to his early stage portfolio, Ronny has also led opportunistic investments in Airbnb, Pinterest, and Reddit.
Lars Dalgaard, Andreessen Horowitz
When software giant SAP purchased SuccessFactors for $3.6 billion in 2011, many saw the acquisition as the tipping point for enterprise software’s transition to the cloud. But when Lars Dalgaard (SuccessFactors founder/CEO) stepped down from his role at SAP in 2013, and rose up as Andreessen Horowitz’s newest general partner, some questioned the career change. Now, almost two years later, Lars has proven himself several times over with investments in Zenefits (the cloud HR software and 2014’s fastest growing company by valuation), Imgur (the image-sharing platform that grew from a measly $7 of capital to more than 115 million unique visitors), and Teespring (the blazingly high-growth e-commerce company with a social twist). As the veteran of one historical tech revolution, Lars is poised to lead today’s innovators into tomorrow’s era of disruption.
Kent Goldman, Upside Partnership
In 2014, after six years with the pioneer of seed VC, First Round Capital, Kent amicably struck off on his own to found Upside Partnership, which he describes as a pure seed stage fund. Although still very young, with its first fund close last July, Upside has kept true to its founder’s reputation as a scrappy, creative investor by making its own twist on the typical fund structure. In Upside, every founder in the fund’s portfolio becomes a partner, taking a percentage cut of the total fund profits. Building on the backs of several successful investments with First Round, including Airware, HotelTonight, Path, MemSQL, and Threadflip, Kent will certainly continue to impress, this time as both a founder and investor.
Chris Howard, Fuel Capital
As a branding and marketing guru who recently relocated to the Bay Area, Chris Howard does not fit the typical Silicon Valley investor profile. But that distinction might be the key to his success. After seven years as a principal for Seattle-based Ignition Partners, where he started and led the firm’s seed program, Chris caught fire in San Francisco with the founding of Fuel Capital, an early stage fund focused on consumer and cloud/infrastructure companies. Building on a strong portfolio – including Teespring, Homejoy, Mesosphere, CoreOS, and iCracked – Chris has earned a reputation for providing far more value than capital could buy. One example of Chris’ hustle for his companies is Teespring, a company to which Chris has devoted more than a quarter of his time over the past 12 months and embedded himself in the office as an extended part of the team.
Annie Kadavy, CRV
Long before she even made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital, CRV Partner Annie Kadavy was knocking on venture’s door at just 17, when she filed her first design patent. Since then, Annie has amassed a promising portfolio in consumer and mobile, new commerce, and digital health with one of venture’s oldest firms. Some of her top picks include Laurel & Wolf (the young but increasingly popular marketplace for interior design), DoorDash (the restaurant delivery service that just notched a nearly $600 million valuation), ClassPass (the latest advance of the Internet’s booming “middleman economy”), and the crowd-funded artists’ platform Patreon, which Annie introduced as a seed investment shortly after its very first product launch. With years logged into venture and finance with the likes of Bain & Co., Warby Parker, and SV Angel, on top of three Stanford degrees, Annie has long since proven her hustle. And she’s just getting started.
Ted Maidenberg, The Social+Capital Partnership
As one of venture’s biggest up-and-coming firms, The Social+Capital Partnership made its Midas debut last year with Mamoon Hamid. But don’t expect Mamoon to hang there on his own for long. Starting his career as a founding member of the Time Warner Investment Group, Social+Capital GP Ted Maidenberg invested in over 60 early stage companies before then leading Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, where he helped push out web and mobile content worldwide. Before joining up with Facebook veteran Chamath Palihapitiya in 2011 to found Social+Capital, Ted spent several years with Hamid at U.S. Venture Partners, where he began as a Kauffman Fellow and his portfolio blossomed into notable acquisitions including Adify and Savings.com (both purchased by Cox Enterprises), Revolution Money (acq. by American Express) and Trunkclub (acq. by Nordstrom). Today, Ted sits on the boards of companies busily changing the face of healthcare (Simplee, Propeller Health, and Better), student lending (Commonbond), media and entertainment (Bustle), and education (creativeLIVE). Look out for Ted to cement Social+Capital’s spot on the Midas List soon.
Chris Paik, Thrive Capital
Named to Forbes’ latest 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital, Chris (based in NYC) is maybe not your typical Harvard grad. Before joining as one of Thrive Capital’s earliest members in 2010, Chris co-founded a social media consultancy, analyzed trends at a fashion consulting firm, worked for an economist, and spent time at Pixar Animation Studios. Since arriving at Thrive, named one of this year’s up-and-coming venture firms, he has helped the firm tap into community-driven startups with his investments in Assembly (a collaborative software development platform) and Patreon (a crowdfunding platform for creatives). Chris also led the firm's investments in ClassPass, a monthly subscription service for unlimited fitness classes, as well as Twitch (acq. by Amazon for $970 million), where he served as a board director.
Keith Rabois, Khosla Ventures
Before joining Khosla Ventures two years ago, Keith Rabois nearly covered the board in his leadership positions with some of the top tech companies to date, including PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide, and Square. And from the other side of the table, his track record has been just as comprehensive. Some of Keith’s previous angel investments come from the shortlist of highest-valued companies and exits in history, including Airbnb, Palantir, YouTube, and Yammer. Known as a crusader for his entrepreneurs, Keith has ushered Khosla into a number of hot companies, including Affirm (PayPal co-founder Max Levchin’s latest financial startup), Stripe (the cross-device payments company), Teespring, and DoorDash. Following on his social and commerce background, Keith also founded Opendoor, a company that promises to revolutionize and greatly simplify the archaic real estate market.
Eric Vishria, Benchmark
Graduating from Stanford at just 19, Eric funneled into the venture world through two tech companies- turned-acquisitions: Loudcloud/Opsware, founded by Ben Horowitz and acquired by HP, and Rockmelt, the social web browser co-founded by Eric and acquired by Yahoo! in 2013. Now, as the new kid in venture investing, Eric has landed in one of the most exclusive clubs in town: Benchmark. The firm’s first hire in six years, Eric and his decades of operator experience in both consumer and enterprise will be a tremendous boost to the equal-partnership firm. And if Benchmark’s second-latest hire, Matt Cohler, is any indication, we’ll be seeing Eric on the Midas List in no time.
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