Looking for the best angel investors? We’ve compiled a list of 50 of the top angel investors (now updated for 2024!) based on what matters—the success of their portfolio.
Some of the angels on this list such as Marc Andreessen and Chris Sacca are well-known, while others are sure to surprise you!
Ready to jump in? Let’s go!
Top Angel Investors in the U.S. by Exit Rate
What do you think of when you think about the “top angel investors?” Perhaps you think about their Twitter followers, how many investments they’ve made, or whether they graced the cover of Forbes.
Exit Rate As an Indicator of Success
This list focused on the success rate of their portfolio, which we think is a much better indicator of who are the top angel investors. In this case, our list of top angel investors is based on the proportion of the startups in which they invested that had an exit such as an acquisition or initial public offering (IPO).
What we found is that many of the top angel investors with the highest rate of exits of their portfolio companies are less well-known and flying under the radar of many founders. On the other hand, many of the most popular angel investors have rather mediocre exit rates.
Our research indicates that if you are more concerned with increasing your chances of success rather than winning a popularity contest, you should focus on lesser-known angel investors.
50 Top Angel Investors with More than 20 Portfolio Companies
| Rank | Angel Investor | Number of Portfolio Companies | Number of Exits | Exit Rate |
| 1 | Marc Andreessen | 40 | 30 | 75.0% |
| 2 | Ali Partovi | 35 | 25 | 71.4% |
| 3 | Bob Pasker | 28 | 19 | 67.9% |
| 4 | Michael Lazerow | 30 | 20 | 66.7% |
| 5 | Hadi Partovi | 41 | 27 | 65.9% |
| 6 | Andy Rankin | 20 | 13 | 65.0% |
| 7 | Keith Rabois | 62 | 40 | 64.5% |
| 8 | Tony Hsieh | 22 | 14 | 63.6% |
| 9 | Pejman Nozad | 22 | 14 | 63.6% |
| 10 | Ronald Conway | 96 | 59 | 61.5% |
| 11 | Farzad Nazem | 54 | 33 | 61.1% |
| 12 | David Tisch | 82 | 48 | 58.5% |
| 13 | Brian Lee | 36 | 21 | 58.3% |
| 14 | Timothy Ferriss | 26 | 15 | 57.7% |
| 15 | William Lohse | 28 | 16 | 57.1% |
| 16 | Mark Goines | 28 | 16 | 57.1% |
| 17 | Dave Morin | 58 | 33 | 56.9% |
| 18 | Mitchell Kapor | 51 | 29 | 56.9% |
| 19 | John Maloney | 30 | 17 | 56.7% |
| 20 | Josh James | 23 | 13 | 56.5% |
| 21 | Kevin Rose | 25 | 14 | 56.0% |
| 22 | Jeff Kearl | 30 | 16 | 53.3% |
| 23 | Chris Sacca | 40 | 21 | 52.5% |
| 24 | Bill Lee | 21 | 11 | 52.4% |
| 25 | Troy Carter | 23 | 12 | 52.2% |
| 26 | Dave McClure | 54 | 28 | 51.9% |
| 27 | Shervin Pishevar | 120 | 62 | 51.7% |
| 28 | Roger Ehrenberg | 31 | 16 | 51.6% |
| 29 | Adeyemi Ajao | 31 | 16 | 51.6% |
| 30 | Auren Hoffman | 76 | 38 | 50.0% |
| 31 | Jeff Bezos | 28 | 14 | 50.0% |
| 32 | Ben Narasin | 24 | 12 | 50.0% |
| 33 | Kim Perell | 26 | 13 | 50.0% |
| 34 | Jonathan Abrams | 22 | 11 | 50.0% |
| 35 | Aaron Levie | 45 | 22 | 48.9% |
| 36 | Allen DeBevoise | 37 | 18 | 48.6% |
| 37 | Joshua Schachter | 66 | 32 | 48.5% |
| 38 | Thomas Lehrman | 31 | 15 | 48.4% |
| 39 | Reid Hoffman | 75 | 36 | 48.0% |
| 40 | Chamath Palihapitiya | 25 | 12 | 48.0% |
| 41 | Marissa Mayer | 23 | 11 | 47.8% |
| 42 | Erik Blachford | 23 | 11 | 47.8% |
| 43 | Don Dodge | 23 | 11 | 47.8% |
| 44 | Victor Koch | 21 | 10 | 47.6% |
| 45 | Ben Davenport | 38 | 18 | 47.4% |
| 46 | Benjamin Ling | 72 | 34 | 47.2% |
| 47 | Brendan Wallace | 53 | 25 | 47.2% |
| 48 | Gary Vaynerchuk | 71 | 33 | 46.5% |
| 49 | Paige Craig | 41 | 19 | 46.3% |
| 50 | Ullas Naik | 39 | 18 | 46.2% |
20 Top Angel Investors with 10-20 Portfolio Companies
We also took a look at angel investors with between 10 and 20 investments to see which ones had the highest investment rate.
The caveat here is that the investors on the following list have relatively few investments, so the correlation is undoubtedly more spurious.
| Rank | Angel Investor | Number of Portfolio Companies | Number of Exits | Exit Rate |
| 1 | Andy Rankin | 20 | 13 | 65.0% |
| 2 | Allen Morgan | 19 | 12 | 63.2% |
| 3 | Brad Garlinghouse | 19 | 12 | 63.2% |
| 4 | Jeff Clavier | 19 | 12 | 63.2% |
| 5 | Jawed Karim | 16 | 10 | 62.5% |
| 6 | Jesse Robbins | 17 | 10 | 58.8% |
| 7 | Don Hutchison | 19 | 11 | 57.9% |
| 8 | Jack Abraham | 19 | 11 | 57.9% |
| 9 | Matthew Luckett | 18 | 10 | 55.6% |
| 10 | Frank A. Bonsal | 19 | 10 | 52.6% |
| 11 | Mike Volpe | 18 | 9 | 50.0% |
| 12 | Chung Ng | 19 | 9 | 47.4% |
| 13 | Scott Kurnit | 19 | 9 | 47.4% |
| 14 | David Stern | 15 | 7 | 46.7% |
| 15 | Ted Leonsis | 20 | 9 | 45.0% |
| 16 | Tom Ryan | 20 | 9 | 45.0% |
| 17 | Ron Suber | 18 | 8 | 44.4% |
| 18 | ?n c?t Chó | 18 | 8 | 44.4% |
| 19 | Andrew Mitchell | 16 | 7 | 43.8% |
| 20 | Richard Branson | 16 | 7 | 43.8% |
What jumps out at me the most about this list is how high the average exit rate is for those investors in this category. There could be a number of factors leading to this such as a high level of selectivity or their ability to actively support a smaller portfolio.
Key Learnings About Top Angel Investors
Our analysis exposed some really interesting findings explained below.
Top Angel Investors Have Smaller Portfolios
Beyond the astronomically high exit rate of the top angel investors, it’s also fascinating to note that the top angel investors are also not the most active. In fact, many of the top fifty angels on this list have made between twenty and fifty investments.
This makes sense since investors with a smaller portfolio can be more actively engaged with their startups to help ensure success. Also, it could be that these investors see a substantial number of startups but are a lot more selective in their investments.
Top Angel Investors See Two-Thirds of Their Startups Exit
The success rate of the top angels’ portfolios is simply breathtaking! Top-ranked angel investors see a full two-thirds of their investments reach some kind of an exit. That’s mind-boggling.
Marc Andreessen tops the list with a reported 73% of his angel investments reaching an exit. Wow.
Many Top Angel Investors Are Also Venture Capital Investors
Our list of top angel investors includes many VC investors such as Marc Andreessen, Michael Laserow, Keith Rabois, Pejman Nazod, Chris Sacca, and Reid Hoffman. (To be clear, however, the investments in this analysis only include their angel investments.)
It makes sense that VC investors also have strong angel portfolios. They have great access to high-quality investment opportunities and experience with evaluating venture-backable companies.
Kim Perell Is the Top Female Angel Investor
Unfortunately, our ranking for top angel investors is dominated by men, which I hope will change soon. Kim Perell is by far the best female angel investor according to the exit rate of her portfolio sitting in 33rd place in our ranking with 26 portfolio companies and half of her portfolio reaching an exit, which is likewise jaw-dropping.
The second-highest ranked female investor on our list is Marissa Mayer who is ranked 41st with 47.8% of her angel portfolio reaching an exit.
The Most Active Angels Have Mediocre Exit Rates
One super interesting finding is that there seems to be a bit of an inverse correlation between the number of investments that these angel investors have made and the exit rate of their portfolio.
Those angels with more than a hundred investments tend to cluster at the bottom of the ranking, as seen below:
| Number of Portfolio Companies | Angel Investor | Rank by Exit Rate | Number of Exits | Exit Rate |
| 428 | Edward Lando | 334 | 45 | 10.5% |
| 222 | Naval Ravikant | 176 | 66 | 29.7% |
| 218 | Fabrice Grinda | 126 | 82 | 37.6% |
| 197 | Charlie Songhurst | 288 | 31 | 15.7% |
| 191 | Nadav Ben-Chanoch | 385 | 8 | 4.2% |
| 185 | Mark Cuban | 254 | 36 | 19.5% |
| 185 | Scott Belsky | 255 | 36 | 19.5% |
| 173 | Gokul Rajaram | 349 | 15 | 8.7% |
| 166 | Daniel Curran | 190 | 46 | 27.7% |
| 161 | Paul Buchheit | 92 | 68 | 42.2% |
| 155 | Elad Gil | 283 | 25 | 16.1% |
| 150 | Alexis Ohanian | 155 | 49 | 32.7% |
| 145 | Jon Oringer | 359 | 11 | 7.6% |
| 141 | Wei Guo | 251 | 28 | 19.9% |
| 136 | Marc Benioff | 145 | 47 | 34.6% |
| 129 | Scott Banister | 80 | 57 | 44.2% |
| 120 | Shervin Pishevar | 36 | 62 | 51.7% |
| 113 | Louis Beryl | 193 | 31 | 27.4% |
| 112 | Justin Mateen | 310 | 14 | 12.5% |
| 104 | Kevin Mahaffey | 222 | 25 | 24.0% |
| 103 | Kevin Lin | 378 | 5 | 4.9% |
Of those angels with more than a hundred portfolio companies recorded on Crunchbase, Paul Buccheit, Scott Banister, and Fabrice Grinda have the highest exit rates with about a third of their investments seeing an exit as indicated in the table above.
An Important Caveat on the Data Set
As with all data, there are likely some missed or inaccurate data points. All data for this analysis came from Crunchbase, and it seems accurate enough for comparative purposes. However, I would not worry too much about whether the 26th ranked investor should really be in the 25th spot, for example.
Our team also spot-checked the exits independently, and this data point seems to be very accurate overall and a good basis for comparison.
In Conclusion
I have personally seen that startup founders are extraordinarily focused on the most active and popular angel investors. But it might be a mistake to put an outsized amount of effort in trying to reach these star angel investors.
The most active angel investors in our data set have both mediocre exit rates and relatively low diversity investment rates.
It might be better to reach out to angel investors with moderate levels of activity (e.g. 20-50 investments) since they seem to invest in startups that reach an exit.
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