Nicole DeTommaso 🪄@nic_detommaso
A Stanford professor analyzed 1,000's of angel investments to find out who's had the MOST unicorns.
The results are fascinating.
- David Morin tops the list with 23 unicorns
- Peter Thiel and Lee Linden follow with 21 each
- David Sacks at 20
- Marc Benioff at 19
A few things that stand out:
1) Almost every top angel was a founder or exec at a large tech company first. The clear signal here - they were mostly operators who earned their access.
2) Many co-invested together repeatedly. Thiel, Sacks, and Levchin all overlapped at PayPal and went on to back the same unicorns (Facebook, Airbnb, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX).
3) No women appear in the top 50. Sad.
4) The entry threshold to make this list is 9 unicorns (nuts!). The average unicorns across the top 50 is 13 (more nuts!).
I share this for folks to have inspiration to angel invest themselves!
There has NEVER been a better time - we are at a major tech inflection point.
If you're thinking about angel investing and forming angel syndicates, you should check out Verivend. Automated capital calls, one-click funding for co-investors, real-time visibility into who's in. Seamless software with a great team to hold your hand through it.
Try it yourself: lnkd.in/grrJxqxq
Full credit to Ilya Strebulaev and his team at the Stanford for this research.
