Meet The World’s Top 20 Smartest Tech Investors, 2016

It’s not shocking, Sequoia Capital’s Jim Goetz has been named the world’s smartest tech investor, according to Forbes’ Midas list, a ranking of the top 100 venture capitalist investors.  Two other Sequoia investors also made it into the top ten, Hongkonger Neil Shen, ranking seventh and Douglas Leone, made it in at nine. Neil, the only Chinese to make the top 10, helped to bring Airbnb and LinkedIn to China.

Jim Goetz is followed by Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures. Chris Sacca and Peter Fenton, and Mary Meeker, round out the top five. The list features the top venture capitalists from around the world based on qualifying deals with at least a $200m exit (IPOs or mergers & acquisitions) or rounds that value a company above $400m in the last five years.

1) James Goetz, of Sequoia Capital.
Notable Deals: WhatsApp, Palo Alto Networks, Nimble Storage

2) Steve Anderson, of Baseline Ventures.
Notable Deals: Twitter, Social Finance, Machine Zone, ExactTarget

3) Chris Sacca, of Lowercase Capital.
Notable Deals: Uber, Twitter, Stripe, Lookout Inc, Twilio

4) Peter Fenton, of Benchmark.
Notable Deals: Twitter, New Relic, Docker, Yelp!, Hortonworks

5) Mary Meeker, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Notable Deals: Facebook, JD.com, Airbnb, Groupon, Spotify

6) Josh Kopelman, of First Round Capital.
Notable Deals: LinkedIn, OnDeck Capital, Five Below, AppNexus

7) Neil Shen, of Sequoia Capital.
Notable Deals: Alibaba Group, JD.com, China Internet, BAIOO Family

8) Bill Gurley, of Benchmark.
Notable Deals: Uber, GrubHub, Nextdoor, Glassdoor, Wealthfront

9) Douglas Leone, of Sequoia Capital.
Notable Deals: FireEye, ServiceNow, Jasper Tech, Medallia, Meraki

10) Peter Thiel, of Founders Fund.
Notable Deals: Facebook, Airbnb, Palantir Tech, LinkedIn, Stripe

11) Jim Breyer, of Breyer Capital
Notable Deal: Facebook

12) Paul Madera, of Meritech Capital Partners
Notable Deal: Facebook

13) Sameer Gandhi, of Accel Partners
Notable Deal: Flipkart

14) Scott Sandell, of New Enterprise Associates
Notable Deal: Tableau Software

15) Marc Andreessen, of Andreessen Horowitz
Notable Deal: Facebook

16) Robert Nelsen, of ARCH Venture Partners
Notable Deal: Juno Therapeutics

17) Yuri Milner, of Digital Sky Technologies
Notable Deal: Twitter

18) Reid Hoffman, of LinkedIn
Notable Deal: Airbnb

19) Mike Maples, Jr., of Floodgate
Notable Deal: Twitter

20) Carl Gordon, of OrbiMed
Notable Deal: Acerta Pharma