FORBES LIST
The Midas List Europe
The Top Venture Capital Investors In Europe, Israel and the Middle East In 2021
EDITED BY ALEX KONRAD, REPORTED BY Iain Martin
PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH TRUEBRIDGE CAPITAL PARTNERS
T
Sequoia
he IPO of a Romanian-founded startup has propelled new challengers closer to the top of Europe’s top tech investor ranks – but they’re still chasing Midas List Europe’s top venture capitalist in a year in which a record $100 billion has poured into the region’s flourishing startup scene.
UiPath’s April 2021 public offering valued the maker of robotic process automation software at as much as $50 billion at its peak; though it now trades around half that value, that’s enough to propel Sequoia’s Luciana Lixandru and Accel’s Philippe Botteri into the top 10 ranks at No. 2 and No. 7, with Seeedcamp’s Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Eduardo Espinal also benefitting from the Bucharest bounty at No. 16. Other 2021 offerings like the debuts of used car dealer Auto1, food delivery service Deliveroo and money transfer app Wise help propel five others onto the list.
But they’re all still chasing fintech whiz Jan Hammer, who reigns atop the Midas List Europe for the fourth consecutive year. The Czech-born Index Ventures partner’s in Wise, too, as well as U.S. based trading app Robinhood, which went public in July 2021. Add that to a portfolio that includes Dutch payments giant Adyen, which listed in 2018, and private companies like French healthcare startup Alan, data governance firm Collibra and payroll business Remote, and Hammer can play a hand of startup successes that’s still too tough to beat.
Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the Midas List Europe is a data-driven list that recognizes 25 startup investors who have made bigger and bolder bets, from high-profile IPOs to still-private unicorns. The list counts investments in private companies that have raised funding at a valuation of $200 million or more, or that have gone public or been acquired for at least $100 million, within the past five years. Extra weight is given to realized and more recent returns. Forbes and TrueBridge review confidential data submissions for hundreds of investors across dozens of firms as well as publicly available data sets to ensure that each year's list is the most accurate yet.
See the full list of leading dealmakers, highlights of new and notable list makers and analysis on the companies behind its biggest movers below.
“We've come a long way in the past ten years, from a tiny community to a mature group of founders who can support and learn from each other. Founders don't need to look to Silicon Valley – we have enough home-grown success stories.”— New No. 2 Luciana Lixandru, partner, Sequoia
tech landscape
transformed by the
pandemic and high-profile IPOs for its beneficiaries means a sea change atop the 20th annual Midas List of the world’s best venture capitalists.
Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the Midas List is the definitive ranking of the top 100 tech investors. At number one for the first time is Sequoia partner Alfred Lin, the former Zappos executive and partner of the late Tony Hsieh, who jumped 31 spots thanks to his firm's investments in two of 2020’s biggest IPOs – home rental site Airbnb and food delivery service DoorDash. He is one of 14 Midas List members who bet on Airbnb and one of 8 who backed DoorDash, but he’s the only one to serve on the board of directors at both businesses, which went public on consecutive days in December.
Those companies and others, such as Coinbase, Nubank and Snowflake, have propelled a record crop of newcomers onto this year’s list, with 23 making their debut. Another 10 returned to the list after having previously dropped out, meaning more than a third of the 2020 class have left the ranks. Mayer "Micky" Malka, Santi Subotovsky and Nicolas Szekasy are the first three investors from Latin America to make the cut. They're joined by newcomers like Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson, immigrants from Iran and Spain, making their debuts from Pear VC. Hershenson is one of 12 women to make the list, up from 11 last year and tying 2019’s record but demonstrating how far the VC industry has yet to come.
To qualify, investors are ranked by their portfolio companies that have gone public or been acquired for at least $200 million over the past five years, or that have at least doubled their private valuation since initial investment to $400 million or more over the same period. Forbes and TrueBridge put a premium on liquid exits over unrealized returns, as well as large multiples on money invested for early-stage investors or large sums of cash returned for growth-stage specialists. (Or for top Midas investors: both.) A data-driven list, the Midas List is produced from a combination of public data sources and the submissions of hundreds of investment partners across dozens of firms each year.
Note: Investors who have been fired or resigned from their firms for misconduct are subject to removal from Midas List eligibility.
