Angel Investors - Who Fund Startup Companies
Originally used as a term to describe wealthy individuals who funded theater productions in great Britain, angel investors have become the go-to people when your start-up needs seed money, but not enough warrant a full fledged venture capitalist firm. Acquiring an angel investors can involve everything from full on formal proposals to an individual visiting your dorm room and writing a check. What follows are some of those individuals.
Ron Conway – Arguably the most famous angel investor of them all, Ron Conway is a founding general partner in the investment fund, “Angel Investors LP.” Ron’s fame (infamy?) in the angel investment world has earned him the unofficial title of, “Godfather of Silicon Valley”. Ron was one of the first investors in Ask Jeeves, Google, and Paypal. Currently he also works as an advisor for Facebook.
Andy Bechtolsheim – Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Andy made one of the most famous angel investments when he gave $100,000 to two boys in their dorm room after they showed him their search engine software. The boys’ names were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their software was Google. Andy also founded Granite Systems and Kealia, which which were later bought by Cisco, and Sun respectively. Currently, he is the chief architect at Sun.
Chris Sacca – One of the more recent employees of Google to move into angel investing, Chris Sacca began in 2006 with his investment in Photobucket. Up until recently, Chris was Head of Speical Initiatives at Google Inc., where he headed Google’s efforts to install a WiFi network in San Francisco. He also headed a similar project in Mountain View.
Loic Le Meur – A well known French blogger and entrepreneur, Loic Le Meur had his start when he founded his first company, an interactive agency, B2L. At the same time, Loic also founded RapidSite France, which grew to be the number one web-hosting company for small business’s in France. Loic would go on to sell both B2L and Rapidsite. Since then, Loic has founded and sold Tekora, an application service provider, as well purchased Ublog, which he merged with Six Apart where he was named Executive Vice President. Loic has served as an angel investor in a number of tech startups and currently serves on the RSS advisory board who are in charge of creating the RSS 2.0 specification.
Aydin Senkut – Founder and President of of Felicis Ventures, Aydin was originally a Senior Manager at Google in charge of strategic partner development and account management in Asia Pacific. Since moving into angel investing Aydin’s investments have rivaled even Ron Conway’s. Companies in his portfolio have included RapLeaf and webs.com. He also funds Lead2, a conservative organization focused on public policies regarding entrepreneurship and technological innovation.
Marc Andreessen – Marc will forever be cemented in the internet’s history as one of the two creators of the very first popular web browser Mosaic, which Marc programmed while he was a student at the University of Illinois. When Mosaic was brought into the commercial world it was given a new name, Netscape. When AOL bought Netscape for $4.2 billion, Marc became AOL’s CTO. Since then he has served as founder and chair of Loudcloud (later known as Opsware before being purchased by Hewlett-Packard), and is now co-founder of Ning. Marc has invested in such companies as Digg, Plazes, and Twitter.
Peter Thiel – Co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, Peter is now President of Clarium Capital Management LLC and a managing partner of The Founders Fund. Earning a degree in 20th Century Philosophy, as well as a Juris Doctorate from Stanford, Peter practiced law for a short period before forming Thiel Capital Management. Co-Founding PayPal, he would take it public and sell it to eBay for $1.5 billion. His personal stake has been valued at roughly $55 million. After the sale he reformed Thiel Capital Management under the new name Carium Capital Management. Peter has made investments in companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Friendster.
Josh Kopelman – Founder of Half.com, an online store that connected sellers of used books, music, and movies to prospective buyers, Josh successfully sold Half.com in 2000 to Ebay for $350 million. In 2001, Josh and his wife created the Kopelman Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on angel investing. Currently, Josh is Managing Director of First Round Capital. He has invested in a number of tech companies including StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and Wikia.
Dr. Ian Sobieski – Managing director and founder of the “Band of Angels Fund L.P.”, Dr. Sobieski oversees a fund amounting to roughly $50 million. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics from Stanford University. Beyond that he also has an MS in Aeronautics, a BS in Aerospace Engineering, and a BA in Philosophy. Before managing the “Band of Angels Fund”, Dr. Sobieski was a director and executive at Evite.com. He is also a founding member of the Angel Capital Association and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Young Venture Capitalists Association.
Joe Kraus – Founder of Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, Joe had his start when he joined with five engineering friends to found Excite. After leaving Excite a year before it went bankrupt, Josh would co-found Digitalconsumer.org a non-profit group dedicated to fair-use rights in digital media. Josh would also serve as co-founder and CEO of Jotspot, which was bought by Google, where Josh now serves as director of product management. He has also been involved as an angel investor in a number of tech startups including LinkedIn.
Gil Penchina – A graduate of the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, Gil gained most of his fame as Vice President and General Manager at eBay. He made news when he left eBay in 2006 to become the CEO of Wikia, Wikipedia’s for profit sister company. Although currently “on hiatus” from angel investing, Gil has invested in such companies as Paypal, Evite, Properazzi, and Qype.
Despite their varying background and training, angel investors to all be ambitious trailblazers with their eyes on the future and the funds to push towards it.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Just For Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
