Fewer New Names And More Explosive Exits
Booming ExitsAs a result of some enormous standouts amongst last year’s 107 total venture-backed exits, there were several company IPOs that had a capillary effect within this year’s list of newcomers (although it should be noted that Midas List rankings are based on cumulative exit performance, not just one-hit wonders).
Three new entrants, for example, benefitted from Twitter’s landmark IPO: Deven Parekh (#22) and Jerry Murdock (#88) of Insight Ventures, and David Lee of SV Angel (#82). Likewise, e-commerce leader Zulily helped boost both Dan Levitan of Maveron (#56) and Craig Sherman of Meritech (#71) with its $2.6 billion IPO.
Last year’s explosive IPOs also dropped at least three new names into the Top 100. Valued at over $3.0 billion at the time of its exit, health IT company Castlight Health helped lead Mamoon Hamid to #80, marking The Social+Capital Partnership’s first entry into the Midas List. Former Sequoia partner and now co-founder of Wing Ventures, Gaurav Garg, hit jackpot with his bet on FireEye, which pulled off a $2.3 billion valuation at IPO. Similarly, Jeff Crowe of Norwest Venture Partners (#77) made it big in the public markets with RetailMeNot, the online coupon king.
Acquisitions, too, played a role in propelling new names onto the Top 100. After a flurry of news headlines, Google’s $3.2 billion purchase of Nest Labs bumped up the portfolios of two Midas newcomers, Peter Nieh of Lightspeed Venture Partners (#83) and Randy Komisar of KPCB (#100). Yahoo, in another startup swallowed by a major corporation, bought out Tumblr for $1.1 billion, pushing in Shervin Pishevar (#90) of Sherpa Ventures. And, with the help of eBay’s $800 million acquisition of Braintree, Ryan Sweeney of Accel Partners hit #45.
Private Company Hits
Even in the midst of last year’s massive venture-backed exits, a few private companies still managed to bulk up newcomers’ portfolios. With rumors to IPO any day now, popular file-sharing service Dropbox ushered in Sequoia’s Bryan Schreier at #72, and Australian-based Atlassian Software Systems helped bring Kevin Comolli (#43) of Accel Partners into the ring.
Newcomers From Around The Globe
Despite the region’s historical dominance over the venture world, a surprising 8 out of 19 newcomers joined the List from somewhere outside the Bay Area.
Among the 15 newcomers based in the U.S., 1 operates in Seattle (Dan Levitan), and 3 operate in New York (Deven Parekh, Jerry Murdock, and Carl Gordon). Gordon (OrbiMed Advisors, #64) is also the only new incoming life science investor, who struck a hit with his investment in Aragon Pharmaceuticals (acq. by Johnson & Johnson) last year.
Of the four internationally based new entrants, three operate in China and one in the UK (the lone London-based investor, Kevin Comolli). Co-founding partner of DCM China, Hurst Lin (#54), joined this year’s Midas List with his investment in what many identify as “the Craigslist of China,” 58.com (NYSE: WUBA). At #81, Kui Zhou’s investment in Boyaa Interactive International bumped him into the Top 100, marking Sequoia’s second new contribution to the 2014 Midas List. Lastly, Redpoint’s David Yuan (#96) entered with his board company iDreamsky, one of China’s leading mobile startups that aims to introduce Western mobile games to Chinese audiences.
Newcomers On The 2014 Midas List
Deven Parekh
Rank: 22
Deven Parekh debuts high on the Midas List this year thanks to an early(ish) 2009 investment in Twitter (IPO 2013), as well as investments in Chegg (IPO 2013), Tumblr (acquired by Yahoo in 2103) and Flipboard. Parekh also helped steer Tumblr to its sale to Yahoo last year and scored with BuddyMedia (acquired by Salesforce for $785 million in 2012). Parekh manages investments in e-commerce, consumer internet data, and application software businesses. In 2012 Parekh led a $165 million equity investment in Drilling Info, an Austin-based data intelligence provider the for oil and gas industry. He's on the board at Fanatics, an online retailer for sports merchandise owned by Kynetic, which also owns ShopRunner and Rue La La.
Kevin Comolli
Rank: 43A Northwestern grad and veteran to the London investing community, Kevin Comolli's investment wins are all over the map, from Finnish game maker Supercell, which sold a controlling 51% stake to Japan's SoftBank in 2013 at a $3 billion valuation, to Israeli-founded Varonis Systems (IPO 2014), which has recently traded at a market cap of $1 billion. The Accel London partner's stake in Supercell notched him the biggest new exit of any Accel partner in any geography for the year. Comolli's earned smaller wins through British chipmaker Icera (acquired by Nvidia in 2011 for $370 million) as well as Playfish (acquired by Electronic Arts in 2009) before ultimately shutting down. Current investments include Australian enterprise company Atlassian Software and New York City firms Etsy and Knewton.
Michael Goguen
Rank: 44One of the more veteran VCs to debut on the Midas List this year, Michael Goguen is a member of the "new" old guard at Sequoia Capital, having been a partner there since 1996. His focus: enterprise IT, infrastructure, chips and cybersecurity investments. An engineer by trade, Goguen led Sequoia's investments in flash-based storage company Virident Systems and networking software maker Infoblox (IPO 2012), where Goguen remains on the board. Other board seats include at Click Security, OpenDNS, Quantenna Communications and R2 Semiconductor. Goguen's also part of the group effort from Sequoia that helped FireEye make it to the public market (IPO 2013). A New England native, Goguen's spent much of his free time in recent years in the quiet of Montana, where he spends his weekends around Whitefish Lake.
Ann Lamont
Rank: 46Veteran investor Annie Lamont returns to the Midas List this year with a string of recent hits in her wheelhouse, a blend of expertise in healthcare and financial services technology. Lamont's latest exits include Castlight Health (IPO 2014), Benefitfocus (IPO 2013), NetSpend (IPO 2010 and acquired in 2013 by Total System Services for $1.4 billion), and PharMEDium Healthcare (acquired by Clayton Dubilier & Rice for a reported $900 million). Lamont, one of the most successful women in venture history, currently serves on the boards of Acculynk, Independent Living Systems, Precision Health Holdings, Radisphere National Radiology Group and xG Health Solutions. Lamont joined Oak in 1982 after a stint as an analyst at Hambrecht & Quist. She was the firm's general partner from 1986 to 2006. Earlier in Lamont's career she developed a number of successful biotechs: Cephalon, ViroPharma, Esperion. Her husband, Ned, was the 2006 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, losing in the general election to Joe Lieberman.
Ryan Sweeney
Rank: 36New Midas Lister Ryan Sweeney invests in enterprise, marketplace and financial-tech companies for Accel Partners, which he joined in 2008 from Summit Partners. Sweeney led the first round of funding for payments company Braintree in 2011, the same year he scored an exit through another Chicago company, Groupon (IPO 2011); Braintree sold to eBay in December 2013 for $800 million. And Sweeney was part of the Accel team that invested in mobile enterprise company AirWatch, which VMWare acquired for $1.5 billion in February of 2014. Sweeney also led Accel's investment in Australian foreign currency exchange and payments company OzForex (IPO 2013). Sweeney's still on the board at OzForex, as well as at investments Hootsuite, LightSpeed and Qualtrics, an online survey software company in Provo, Utah, while helping with one of the firm's large private portfolio companies, Atlassian.
Aydin Senkut
Rank: 44Born in Turkey, Aydin Senkut founded Felicis Ventures in 2006. His firm has had 47 public exits already, including YuMe (IPO 2013), and 46 acquisitions by such tech giants as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Ebay, Yahoo and Intuit. He scored nicely with enterprise Wi-Fi company Meraki (acquired by Cisco in 2012 for $1.2 billion), in which he had invested early. His current investments include Angry Birds-maker Rovio, ClearSlide, Shopify, Practice Fusion, Inkling, BrightRoll, SoundHound and Dropcam. Prior to Senkut's venture capital career, he worked at Google, first as a product manager in 1999, and ended up responsible for Google's international strategic partnerships.
Bryan Schreier
Rank: 72Sequoia Capital partner Bryan Schreier remembers when, as an aspiring investor with little practical experience, he pitched Sheryl Sandberg, then an executive at a still fairly small private company, Google. Sandberg wasn't impressed with the pitch, but she did offer Schreier a job. As an eventual leader of Google's international sales team, Schreier would go on to manage hundreds of people. He brought that experience to Sequoia in 2008, where he's managed firm investments in Hearsay Social, Qualtrics and Trulia (IPO 2012). Schreier's big private investment today is Dropbox, the storage company valued at about $10 billion, where Schreier is a director and recently worked his Google ties to help snag the company a top-tier COO Dennis Woodside, closing the hire over a long mano-a-mano surf. Schreier is hands-on with his investments. With another board company, farm-to-table marketplace Good Eggs, Schreier says he had vetted the company thoroughly before offering a term sheet--because his family was already avid customers.
Jeff Crowe
Rank: 77Jeff Crowe, another veteran VC making his first appearance on the Midas List, has been with Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) since 2004, where he focuses on consumer internet companies. His rank comes thanks to digital coupon firm RetailMeNot, which had a sizzling 2013 IPO. Crowdsourced financing startup Lending Club looks to be his next big exit with an IPO looming. NVP is the largest shareholder in the company. Jeff's other previous investments include The Echo Nest (acquired by Spotify), Admeld (acquired by Google), Jigsaw (acquired by Salesforce.com) and Tuvox (acquired by West Interactive). He currently serves on the boards of RetailMeNot, Lending Club, Badgeville, Extole, Owler, trueXmedia, Turn, Madison Reed and AdChina. Before going over to the "dark side" of venture, Crowe was a successful entrepreneur. He cofounded and was chief executive at e-commerce company Edify, which went public in 1996 and was acquired by S1 Corporation in 1999.
David Lee
Rank: 82New Midas List member David Lee runs the day-to-day operations of SV Angel, the pioneering "super angel" fund that he cofounded with fellow list mate Ron Conway. They write small checks to more than 100 startups each year, but the ones that matter to his ranking are Twitter (IPO 2013), Buddy Media (acquired in 2012 by Salesforce.com for $785 million) and Climate Corp. (acquired by Monsanto in 2013 for $900 million). Other 2013 exits include Mashery (sold to Intel), Tremor Media (IPO), Pulse (sold to LinkedIn), YuMe (IPO) and Topsy (sold to Apple). New investments include Airware, iCracked, Oscar Health and Crowdtilt. Prior to SV Angel, David was at Baseline Ventures and was a founding member of Google's business development team. He briefly led business development at StumbleUpon prior to its sale to eBay. Lee worked as a corporate attorney at leading technology law firms. He moved to Los Angeles last year but still spends a ton of time in Silicon Valley.
Mamoon Hamid
Rank: 80A new Midas Lister, Mamoon Hamid founded The Social+Capital Partnership in late 2011 with partners Chamath Palihapitiya, a Facebook veteran, and Ted Maidenberg, a former colleague of Hamid's at USVP, where Hamid started his investing career in 2005 as an associate and then partner. Hamid's early stage bets include as a private backer of Yelp (IPO 2012), plus investments for USVP in Yammer (sold to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion), Castlight Health (IPO 2014) and Box, where Hamid first joined a board as an associate in 2007. Hamid stepped down from the boards of Box, Yammer and Castlight Health, all of which he found at sub $1 million revenue, when he left USVP, but he remains actively involved in Box through a later $25 million investment from Social+Capital. Hamid is now on the board of Bluenose, Clearslide, Cloudon, InstaEDU, Netskope, OneLogin and his alma mater, Purdue University. Born in Pakistan and raised in Frankfurt, Hamid is a dual U.S.-German citizen and graduated college at age 19.
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