Top 100 Active Angel Investors List for Startups

The startup marketplace by design is mostly cash-strapped, especially in their early stages. Founders start a company pooling in resources from personal savings and donations from family and friends. Beyond this, a steady injection of funds is required for the company to innovate and grow. This is when startups find angel investors.

Angel Investors

Startup fundraising happens in stages. It begins at home with the founder’s contacts, moving towards angel investors and finally scaling up to venture capitalists. These investment instruments are unique in design and entrepreneur-friendly. As we can see angel investors are the first external funding source for a startup.

What is an angel investor?

Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals who invest in the early stages of a startup in exchange for equity in the company. Angel investors for startups are also known as private investors, seed investors, angel funders, informal investors, or business angels. Angel investments are mostly one time and aim at assisting the take-off of a startup.

By design, an angel investor is funding the entrepreneur with company funds and a brilliant idea, unlike a regular business investor focused solely on profits. Unlike venture capitalists, angels are helping the startup take their first steps and business gains are only secondary.

Why do startups prefer angel investors for funding?

Startups in their early stages need as much hand-holding as possible. Money is one aspect, but the optimum use of it and resourceful expenditures are key to a startup’s financial stability. Angel investors for startups provide this wonderful combination of funds and expertise. Some of the obvious reasons for preferring angel investors are:

• Offer wealth and knowledge – The best angel investors are usually the ones with a wide gamut of first-hand experience of running successful enterprises. Apart from the money, they contribute by mentoring the startups as well. Research shows that startups backed by angel investors stand a higher chance of growth and greater rates of returns.
• Helps in networking with industry experts – Since angel investors for startups are themselves part of a wide professional network, the companies they invest in and the entrepreneurs they mentor receive a good introduction into these circles. It is a crucial addition as apart from access to a wide range of experienced professionals, these introductions form the basis of further funding rounds as well.
• Willing to take risks – A typical angel investment gives an IRR of 20 – 40% over 5 – 7 years if the startup succeeds. Thus an angel investor has only his experience and the community’s know-how to spot potentially profitable ideas and support them to fruition. Despite all checks, most startups fail and the investor loses a substantial chunk of the funds. This is a prevailing risk in this sector.

Finding a Right Angel Investor

Angel investments despite being risky are trending in equity circles owing to the possibility of massive returns in comparison to regular investment methods. An entrepreneur has to be careful while choosing a connection as their company’s equity is at stake. The way angels carefully scrutinize proposals and decide whom to invest in; founders must research as well before agreeing to onboard an angel investor.

How to find the right angel investor for a startup?

From a sea of potential investors, let us look at some pointers to find angel investors suited for your company:

• Know their profile – As discussed in the previous section, though not mandatory, an accredited investor might be your best option. Their financial background is vetted thus making them more reliable. Apart from this, some other important aspects of their profile could be:
  • Ready to invest at least $150,000 and open to participate in angel syndicates increasing the total value of investments.
  • Ready to hold the investment for at least 5 – 7 years.
  • Successful entrepreneurial experience, preferably in the same industry.
  • Enjoys mentoring and willing to be part of a growing venture.
  • Geographically well suited, preferably in the same region as the company.
• Participate in business networks – Due to the risk factor involved in angel investments, deals are granted mostly to the ones introduced by a reference. As an entrepreneur, one must focus on establishing their identity in their regional business networks and connect with as many business owners as possible. Business owners have the potential to become angel investors for startups or happen to know many of them.
• Online networks – Online platforms such as websites and social media pages are increasingly trending as active networking platforms. Creating favorable connections has never been easier.

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Top 100 Active Angel Investors List – 2020 Updated

Now that we have a fair idea about how to identify a potential angel investor based on business needs, we present you a comprehensive list of 100 active angel investors. This list aims to provide a snapshot of the investment profile of each of these 100 angel investors.

List of important Active Angel Investors

Further, we have shortlisted the 15 most influential, well-networked, and diverse individuals who are leading the angel investing scene today. This section provides a brief about each one of them.

1) Fabrice Grinda

Fabrice Grinda is a New York based French entrepreneur and super angel. His entrepreneurial journey began in 1998 at the age of 23 when he co-founded and served as the CEO of Aucland, which later became one of the largest auction sites in Europe. He also co-founded Zingy and OLX. 

His investments are focused on marketplaces that connect buyers to the target group of sellers. Some of his early investments were in Alibaba, Flexport, Delivery Hero, Betterment, and Brightroll. He presently runs a startup studio and venture fund by the name FJ Labs that helps startups build successful companies. 

Grinda along with his team of experts are known to analyze about 100 companies every week and commit to a new investment almost every 15 days. He has 200+ startups in the portfolio, of which 70% are in the US and the rest 30% distributed globally over  Brazil, France, Germany, UK, Russia, China, and Turkey. Grinda is also a regular business blogger and a public speaker addressing themes such as technology, emerging markets, and investing. Some of his top investments are Airbnb, Boxed, Dropbox, Lending Club,Palantir Technologies, Viagogo, Uber, and Wikimart.  Grinda is reputed to hold $300 million in over 150 exits.

2) Paul Buchheit

Paul Buchheit is an American entrepreneur and angel investor based in Mountain View, California. He had co-founded FriendFeed that Facebook later acquired in a private acquisition in 2009. He was also the creator and lead developer of Gmail. Buccheit co-founded Y Combinator and presently spearheads the Y Combinator Core program. Previously he has also served as an engineer at Intel, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. 

After a rich experience spanning close to a decade, he turned towards angel investing. Buccheit’s investment focus is on media, information technology, health, enterprise software, and analytics based companies in the Silicon Valley and Mountain View region. Over the years he has invested in 150+ companies in the US and seen close to 80 successful exits.

3) Alexis Ohanian

 

Alexis Ohanian is an Armenian-American multi-faceted personality. He is an entrepreneur,investor, activist and author. He openly advocates about the open internet, STEM education, and paid family leave and has authored the best selling book titled ‘Without their permission’. 

Ohanian is best known as the co-founder of Reddit and an early-stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital. Also a former partner at Y Combinator, his other entrepreneurial experiences include Hipmuk and Breadpig. Some of their early stage seed investments were in Instacart, Zenefits, Opendoor, and Cruise. Alexis Ohanian identifies himself as a business dad and believes in investing and building companies that really matter. Through Initialized Capital, Ohanian is managing investments worth more than $500 million in a portfolio worth a market value of $36 billion that include six unicorns.

4) Naval Ravikant

Naval Ravikant is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the co-founder and CEO of AngelList. His entrepreneurial journey began in 1999 as the co-founder of Epinions, a consumer product review site. However his investing journey began in 2007 when he founded the early stage venture capital fund with $20 million – The Hit Forge. 

Around the same time he had started to co-write a blog by the name Venture Hacks that “offered detailed advice on negotiating term sheets, explained which sections mattered, and which provisions were bogus.” This blog eventually grew into AngeList, co-founded by Ravikant in 2010.

In 2014, Naval Ravikant launched an investment fund called Spearhead including founders from about 35 companies with a cumulative worth of over $10 billion. Some companies he has invested in are Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Wish.com, Poshmark, Postmates, Thumbtack, SnapLogic, Opendoor, OpenDNS, Yammer, and Clearview AI. Over the years, Naval has invested in over 200 companies of which 10 are unicorns and recorded over 70 successful exits.

5) Daniel Curran

Daniel Curran is one of the most dynamic, well networked angel investors and tech entrepreneurs in the US receiving a deal flow of close to 300 decks a week.  His areas of passion are stopping/reversing human aging, bci, brain emulation/download and cryonics, empowering customers/voters via new CustEx platform launching soon, and he believes in building $B companies that would improve the world. 

He is best known as the Founder/CEO of USLab(NASDAQ), AlaStor (concept later productized by Cisco), and the CustEx Internet Platform. Also ran strategy as VP/acting COO at Western Digital’s silicon valley San Jose units. Curran is skilled at quickly sizing up a company’s potential and executing the necessary cash flow and customer centric actions. During his 35 year long career, he has founded about 14 startups, invested in over 176 startups with 50+ exits of which 11 were unicorns and one decacorn that alone returned 201x return in just one year. 10% of Curran’s seed picks become unicorns, while top vc Sequoia yields only 3%.

6) Scott Banister

Scott Banister is an American angel investor and entrepreneur. His career began as a pioneer of the email business in 1996 when he co-founded Submit It. Serving as the vice president of technology, the company’s product ListBot ultimately went on to be acquired by Microsoft in 1998. After this success, Banister went on to co-found and serve on the board of many startups such as eVoice, Idealab,  Powerset, and Slide. 

He is best known as the co-founder of IronPort and an early investor at PayPal. Along with his wife, Banister has also co-founded an adult-themed social networking site Zivity. Some of his other investments are in Uber, Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, Causes.com, Topsy Labs, Teleport, Inc. and TekTrak. Scott Banister has a record of 44 exits among 116 portfolio companies. 

7) Marc Benioff

Marc Benioff is an American internet entrepreneur and individual angel considered to be a visionary in cloud computing. He is the Chair/CEO/Founder of Salesforce, the #1 provider of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software globally. Benioff sold his first piece of software “How to juggle” at the age of 14 and founded his first company Liverty Software that created video games at the age of 15. Prior to founding Salesforce, he had spent 13 years at Oracle and served as the youngest Vice President in the company’s history. 

Benioff is also a member of the World Economic Forum and invests in many tech startups. Some of his current investments are in Zuora, Illumio, Convoy, Compass, PernixData, HIghfive, Thrive Global, Kano, Gigster, RedOwl, Rainforest QA, Wingz, Domo, Cloudwords, Mashery, and Nuzzel.   He is known to have made more than 130 investments, deals with close to 71 portfolio companies, and seen 30 successful exits. 

8) Mark Cuban

 

Marc Cuban is an American entrepreneur, individual angel investor, media proprietor, and TV personality. His entrepreneurial journey began by founding a computer consulting service called ‘MicroSolutions’ that was eventually acquired by CompuServe. After this, what began as a solution to not missing out on basketball games, along with his longtime friend Todd Wagner Cuban founded ‘Broadcast.com’ that streamed audio over the internet. This venture too became a grand success and was later acquired by Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars. 

Cuban is popular for owning the NBA Dallas Mavericks and for being the main ‘shark’ in the TV series ‘Shark Tank’. Some of his most profitable investments at ‘Shark Tank’ are Tower Paddle Boards, Nuts ‘N More, Gameday Couture, and Simple Sugars. He also co-owns ‘2929 Entertainment’ and is the chairman of AXS TV. 

Mark Cuban is the renowned investor of 11 patents families and 23 distinct patents publications for his inventions and also founded ‘Sharesleuth’ a research and investigation website that uncovers frauds in the financial markets. Cuban has 97 portfolio companies and 21 exits so far.

9) Simon Murdoch

 

Simon Murdoch is a UK based entrepreneur and early–stage tech investor focused on early-stage software driven businesses based in the UK. His investments cater to the mobile, enterprise software, and SaaS markets. His entrepreneurial journey began with founding the online bookstore ‘Bookpages’ that was later acquired by Amazon. 

He is now co-founder/managing partner at Episode 1 Ventures. Murdoch was previously the Founder of FriendsAbroad, Board Member of Triptease, Global App Testing, SimplyCook, Passfort SwiftSwift, Paramount Zone, Profitero, and Autopaid. Some of his angel portfolio companies are Shazam, Zoopla, LoveFilm, Natural Motion, Covestor, and Shutl. He has close to 53 portfolio companies with 18 exits so far. 

10) Ron Conway

Ronald Conway is an American entrepreneur and investor best known for being the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds. His honest commitment towards helping entrepreneurs and inculcating good practices in the business has led him to serve as a Board Member and take up advisory roles at giants such as Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content (acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder). 

Conway believes in taking an early stage approach towards investments and as a result has taken up many senior roles in companies such as Airbnb, GitHub, Poshmark and Zenefits as well. He currently manages 80+ portfolio companies and has recorded 50 exits so far. 

11) Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is a Swiss-born American entrepreneur who wears many hats. She is an avid investor, philanthropist, journalist, author, and commentator. Dyson is the chairman of ED Venture holdings and Executive Founder of Wellville, a decade old non-profit project that focuses on demonstrating the value of investing in health. She is passionate about new business models, new technologies and new markets and is one of the leading investors in healthcare, open government, digital technology, biotechnology, and outer space. 

Apart from investing in startups, she also enjoys mentoring them by being on their Board. Boxbe, CVO Group (Hungary), Eventful.com, Evernote, IBS Group (Russia, advisory board), Meetup, Midentity (UK), NewspaperDirect, and WPP Group and Yandex (Russia) are some companies where she presides on the Board. Currently she holds 80+ portfolio companies and has seen 25 successful exits. 

12) Dave McClure

Dave McClure is an American entrepreneur and angel investor best known as the founder of the startup accelerator 500 Startups that during his 7 yr tenure had invested in 2,500 companies and 5,000 founders across 75 countries. Some of these companies were Credit Karma, Twilio, SendGrid, The RealReal, Life360, Grab, Intercom, Ipsy, Canva, Udemy, Lucid, Flywire, FabFitFun, TalkDesk, and many more. 

McClure has previously worked at Founders Fund and PayPal as well. Later in 2019 he founded Practical Venture Capital, a new venture capital fund that aims to continue funding the companies he had backed at 500 Startups. Investors in this fund include senior executives of companies like Credit Karma, Lyft, Facebook, and many other experienced private equity investors. He currently manages 48 portfolio companies and has seen 24 successful exits. 

13) David Cohen

David Cohen is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. His entrepreneurial journey began as the founder of Pinpoint Technologies in 1993 which was later acquired by Zoll Medical Corporations. After a brief failure with iContact.com, he founded earFeeder.com that was later acquired by SonicSwap. 

Over the years he has founded many more companies and invested in several startups of which some top names include Uber, Twilio, SendGrid, Pillpack, Classpass, and FullContact. Cohen is best known as the founder of Techstars, which is a startup accelerator program aimed to provide the most needed support for startups in finding angel investments. He has co-authored the book titled ‘Do More Faster; Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup’. Cohen currently holds a portfolio of 13 companies and has seen 7 successful exits so far. 

14) Max Levchin

Max Levchin is an Ukranian born American entrepreneur and angel investor best known as the co-founder of PayPal and its lead contributor to the anti-fraud processes. His investments are focused on cryptography, product and user-interface design, security, web applications, multi-tier server and network design and implementation. He has also co-founded businesses such as Slide.com, HVF, and Affirm. 

Among his many investments, Yelp is notable, where he was one of the earliest investors and their biggest shareholder for a while. Levchin has also invested in Evernote for almost a decade and served in Yahoo’s Board of Directors for three years. Professionally he is a software engineer and was the first executive from Silicon Valley to be appointed for a three year term to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board. He owns 71 portfolio companies and has seen 23 exits over the years. 

15) Joe Caruso

Joe Caruso is an American investor and business mentor. He has also served as the interim CEO for companies in need of a strategic change. He is best known for his advisory roles as Board members of companies like ACT Medical, Acumenta, Adhesive Technologies, Boston Restaurant Associates, Boston University’s Photonics Center (advisory director), Coffee Connection, Colonial Mills, General Analysis, Haymarket Bank, Iconics, Zentox, the Turnaround Management Association (founding director, New England Chapter), the National Association of Corporate Directors (New England Chapter), the Association for Corporate Growth (New England Chapter) and WEST (Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology). 

Caruso is currently a member of the Launchpad venture group and has been members of many other such groups investment groups for early stage companies. Over the years he has invested in 120+ companies and has seen close to 30 successful exits so far. 

Want to Manage Company Equity Operations? Eqvista help you!

We hope this comprehensive list serves as a good starting point for seeking angel investors. However angel investments happen in exchange for equity. Having a strong equity management system will strengthen your company’s profile. 

With our unique Eqvista software you can manage equity transactions, create share certificates, and manage shareholders all in one place. Eqvista’s sophisticated software allows you to issue, track, and manage shares to founders, employees, and investors with absolute ease. For more information read our support articles or contact us today.