The 2025 Forbes Midas Seed List is back for its fourth year to celebrate the early-stage investors who fund the dreamers and create a household name.
Finding the right investor is essential to the long-term success of any startup. The venture capitalists on the Seed List have proven time and time again that they have the knowledge and instincts to invest in winners before anyone else.
These investors are reshaping the tech landscape while raising the standards for what a VC firm should strive to be. Below are the top five U.S. seed investors backing the founders who are building the future.
#1 Pejman Nozad
Pear VC: Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Forbes Lists
- #1 The Midas Seed List (2025)
- #46 The Midas List: Top Tech Investors (2025)
About Investor
For the third consecutive year, Pejman Nozad, a college dropout, holds onto the top spot of the Seed List. Known for his focus on long-view strategies, Nozad built his empire as a struggling Iranian immigrant, selling Persian rugs in Palo Alto before cofounding Pear VC and one of Silicon Valley’s most trusted early-stage investors – coming to “define early-stage excellence.”
Pear Ventures has consistently produced and backed unicorns and “iconic” startups by prioritizing those with the potential to leave a lasting legacy. Beginning in 2014, Nozad became one of the early investors in the AI market, leading pre-seed investments in startups like solar software developer Aurora Solar and AI-driven telehealth startup K Health.
Fund: Pear VC
LinkedIn | Website | Pitchbook
- Investment Sectors: AI, SaaS, Enterprise Tech, Healthcare, Deep Tech, Fintech, Biotech, Climate Tech, Consumer Technology
- Portfolio Highlights: Doordash, Cisco, Instacart, Medium, Dropbox
- Average Check Size: $250K to $6M.
- Pre-seed: $250K -$2M
- Seed: $1M – $6M
- Up to $10M Follow-on
We are a generalist early-stage fund with specialist investors who act as deep thought partners and know your industry inside and out. Our 10-person investment team is composed of specialists in AI, consumer, SaaS, healthcare, fintech, climate tech, enterprise and biotech. We also have experts on recruiting, go-to-market, marketing and PR, and fundraising to help you navigate the early stages of company building.
#2 David Frankel
Founder Collective: General Partner
Forbes Lists
- #2 The Midas Seed List (2025)
- #27 The Midas List: Top Tech Investors (2025)
About Investor
Earning the second spot on this year’s Seed List, David Frankel, managing partner at Founder Collective, continues to prove that staying focused and founder-aligned can generate massive returns. From Coupang to Shield AI, he has been remarkably consistent in backing companies that scale with substance and longevity.
All of this is impressive for someone who got his entrepreneurial start selling airbrush paintings at a South African swap meet. He eventually became co-founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa. Following IS’ acquisition, Frankel then co-founded NextUp, a youth employment accelerator in South Africa.
Fund: Founder Collective
LinkedIn | Website | Pitchbook
- Investment Sectors: Software, E-Commerce, B2B, Mobile, SaaS, Healthcare, Finance
- Portfolio Highlights: Uber, Shield AI, Seat Geek, Whoop, OpenGov, PillPack (acquired by Amazon)
- Average Check Size: $400K-2M
Our Mission: To build the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. We invest at the earliest stages and partner with exceptional entrepreneurs from idea to IPO. We’re fortunate to have spent 15 years and counting with SeatGeek’s founders, through ups, downs, and a global pandemic that shuttered stadiums across the world.
Despite having backed 20-plus billion-dollar startups, we intentionally keep our fund sizes below $100 million to stay aligned with our founders. Massive funds need massive exits to move the needle, which incentivizes a “billions or bust” mentality — big VCs insist on $1 billion-plus exits, even if it means many incredible startups burn out trying.
#3 Ben Sun
Primary Venture Partners: Co-Founder, General Partner
Forbes Lists
- #4 The Midas Seed List (2025) [#3 U.S., #4 Overall)
- #42 The Midas List: Top Tech Investors (2025)
About Investor
Ben Sun is a co-founder and General Partner at Primary. The Midas List ranks him as one of the top 100 tech investors in the world. His founder-first approach originates from having been one: his experiences co-founding Community Connect, one of the first social networking companies, and LaunchTime, an incubator, inform how he supports founders in the portfolio.
Active in the NYC tech hub for over 20 years, Sun focuses his investing in consumer-facing companies. Prior to the entrepreneurial life, Ben worked at Merrill Lynch in the Technology Investment Banking Group, but he really began his career at the age of eight when he worked in his parents’ Chinese restaurant.
Fund: Primary Venture Partners
LinkedIn | Website | Pitchbook
- Investment Sectors: B2B SaaS, fintech, health, devtools, built world, and supply chain
- Portfolio Highlights: Alloy, Alma, Chief, Coupang, Deliveroo, WeWork
- Average Check Size: $1M – $3M
Inspired by a commitment to New York City tech and the founders who bring it to life, Brad Svrluga and Ben Sun launched Primary in 2015 to build a different type of seed firm. The differentiator, unheard of in seed VC, is Primary Impact: Outnumbering investors 2:1, operational experts spend 100% of their time making hires, signing customers, and enabling future fundraising to supercharge growth.
Primary’s commitment to founders begins with how we invest: We take a low-volume, high-conviction approach — because we devote unreasonable resources toward building unfair advantages. This partnership with top-tier founders makes companies in Primary’s portfolio two times more likely to raise a Series A and 19 times more likely to reach a billion-dollar-plus valuation.
#4 Aneel Ranadive
Soma Capital: Co-Founder, Managing Director
Forbes Lists
- #7 The Midas Seed List (2025) [#4 US, #7 overall]
About Investor
Soma Capital was founded by 20-year investing veteran Aneel Ranadiv. In 2015, he co-founded the VC in San Francisco, but has since relocated to Miami.
His father, Vivek Ranadive, founded TIBCO Software, which helped digitize Wall Street and powers 80% of Fortune 500 companies. He was even a mentor to Steve Jobs and Larry Page, whom his father mentored.
Ranadive launched his first venture, messaging app BoredAt, while studying at Columbia University in 2005. He later founded daily deals site Pinchit and location-based apps Tag and Marco Polo.
Fund: Soma Capital
LinkedIn | Website | Pitchbook
- Investment Sectors: B2B SaaS, AI, FinTech, Cleantech, Frontier-tech, PropTech, Cryptocurrency, HealthTech, Consumer Software
- Portfolio Highlights: Deel, Rippling, Ramp, Cognition, Mercor, Cruise, Rappi, Ironclad, Human Interest, Razorpay, Lambda School
- Average Check Size: $100K – $500K
Since inception in early 2015, Soma Capital has invested early in hundreds of startups across the globe in multiple sectors–aways on the hunt for brilliant entrepreneurs who use technology to improve humanity on the largest scales possible. Today we have now seeded 34 unicorns. We are a fund built by founders for founders. With a focus on software, we’ve invested at the seed stage of +20 unicorns – worth a combined $100 billion.
#5 Ross Fubini
XYZ Venture Capital: Founder, Managing Partner
Forbes Lists
- #8 The Midas Seed List (2025) [#5 US, #8 Overall]
- #88 The Midas List: Top Tech Investors (2025)
About Investor
Ross Fubini is the founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital, an early-stage venture fund. Fubini founded XYZ in 2016, shortly before launching the venture community and investment firm Village Global. But this was far from his first venture into capital.
He worked as a partner at seed-stage technology investment firm Kapor Capital before joining Canaan Partners. He currently serves as an adviser to Kapor Capital, Palantir Technologies, Facebook Causes and other early-stage technology companies.
Prior to his VC journey, Ross was a successful entrepreneur, co-founding CubeTree, which was acquired by SuccessFactors in 2010. He is also an active board member of the Level Playing Field Institute (LPFI), a nonprofit that promotes innovative approaches to fairness in education and the workplace.
Fund: XYZ Venture Capital
LinkedIn | Website | Pitchbook
- Investment Sectors: Enterprise Applications, FinTech, SaaS, Enterprise, Climate Tech
- Portfolio Highlights: Anduril, Hex, Bravado, Switchboard, Stir, and Sardine
- Average Check Size: N/A
Operating under the belief that execution solves all problems, XYZ is a venture firm that invests in early-stage founders to help them go faster. We aim to support entrepreneurs in building enduring companies in fintech, enterprise and tech-forgotten industries such as insurance and the public sector.
We primarily back talented founders at the earliest stages of company building — people who have discovered a key insight and have an unfair advantage from “doing the work” or based on their own lived experience. We specialize in helping our companies determine what to build and with whom, ascertain who their initial customers are and why, and connect them with the best people to raise subsequent funding to go faster.
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About the Author: Tess Danielson is a journalist and writer focusing on the intersection of technology and society.
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