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Bloomberg BusinessWeek partnered with startup tracker YouNoodle to analyze the performance of U.S. angel investors. The result is magazine’s first annual ranking of the top angel investors’”chock full of surprises.
Who knew that Amazon.com (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos is such an active financier of early-stage companies? He ranks No. 7 on the list, helping 18 new ventures get off the ground, including Google and the popular micro-blogging site Twitter. Or that former Googlers, Chis Sacca (No. 8), Aydin Senkut (No. 13), and Andrea Zurek (No. 17) are best performers. The trio is among some 40 former employees of the search giant who have become angel investors seeding a new generation of startups and, just maybe, helping shape the next wave of innovation.
As a group, the top 25 angels on the list have made 972 investments’”that number is likely higher since several investors declined to disclose all of their investments. Others say they are in the midst of closing deals they can’t discuss. The companies they have invested in’”740 startups’”employ 328,698 people and have raised a total of $15.2 billion in venture capital, according to YouNoodle.
Sources
- Bloomberg BusinessWeek – Tech Investing: How Smart is the Smart Money?
- A table of the top-ranked angel investors
- The methodology behind the ranking