When it comes to the top enterprise investor by results the private judgments of ride-sharing service Uber and Chinese electronics maker Xiaomi soar above $40 billion and exits from Alibaba’s record-setting public offering to Amazon’s billion-dollar deal for streaming site Twitch begin to pile up, the ranks of the 2015 Midas List are changing fast.
Sequoia Capital partner at #1 due to WhatsApp, the mobile messaging company acquired by Facebook in Oct. for $22 billion. The sole investor in WhatsApp returning more than $3 billion to Sequoia, more than 6x its entire $434 million 2010 fund. Add that to a string of IPOs like HubSpot, which went public in 2014, Nimble Storage and Barracuda Networks in 2013 and the 2012 IPOs of Ruckus Wireless RKUS +% and Palo Alto Networks PANW -0.03%, in which Sequoia’s held its position in the now $11 billion-plus market cap company.
In the rest of the top 10, a new guard is moving in. They’re headlined by the list’s first woman investor in the top 10, GGV Capital partner Jenny Lee. Last year’s #52, Lee is one of the most respected investors in the Chinese tech scene, a former jet and drone engineer who helped GGV get into Xiaomi, the highest-valued private startup in the world, as well as mobile games maker Yodo1, Chukong Technologies and social platform YY, which went public in the U.S. in 2012.
A couple seed investors, Benchmark and several Chinese-focused investors are moving in. With two IPOs in one day (New Relic and Hortonworks) in Dec. and his board position at Twitter, it’s a good time to be Benchmark partner Peter Fenton, who inches up from #3 to #2 for 2015. He’s joined by partner Bill Gurley, the Uber board member and NextDoor investor who slots in at #9. Then a couple of seed investors with early bets in Instagram and Twitter crack the top five: there’s venture cowboy Chris Sacca at #3, now a billionaire thanks his bets on those companies, Uber, and a slew of others like Kickstarter and Stripe, and his long-time mentor, Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, who rises from #8 to #5. Sandwiched between them is Josh Kopelman, the heavy-hitter at First Round Capital who cracks the top 10 than a year as the highest-ranked East Coaster on the list.