- Insider just released its second annual Seed 100 and Seed 25 lists of the best seed venture capitalists.
- The rosters not only celebrate past wins, but also use a statistical model to predict continued success.
- These lists can help founders find VCs and help VCs find the best dealmakers to add to their networks.
Insider’s second annual Seed 100 list once again names America’s best early-stage investors.
Read: The Seed 100: The Best Early-Stage Investors
And our second annual Seed 25 list, which honors the growing number of women in early-stage investing, names the best investors.
Read: The Seed 25: The Best Women Early-Stage Investors
based on data
What sets these rankings apart from other lists of the best venture capitalists is that they are based on data. And it’s not just retrospective reviews celebrating past success. They use a statistical model designed to predict, with great confidence, future success.
That makes Seed 100 and Seed 25 the ideal tools for founders looking for successful early-stage investors to bring on board as partners, as well as other venture capitalists and angel investors looking for the best traders to include in their networks.
In fact, those are the exact reasons why Tribe Capital, the data-driven venture capital firm that created the model, spent three years building and fine-tuning it. Tribe data selected and ranked these top investors from a field of over 1,400 people using 25 attributes.
Read: How Tribe Capital selected and ranked Insider’s Seed 100 and Seed 25 lists of the best seed venture capitalists
Newcomers and rising stars
This year’s list includes 37 newcomers, including Ian Rountree, No. 6 on the Seed 100, who worked in the nonprofit world until realizing, he told us, that nothing changes the world faster than “solving cash flow problems.
Read: How Ian Rountree bet $120,000 of his life savings on startups and became one of the country’s top seed investors
Another newcomer is Miriam Rivera, No. 1 at Seed 25, who built her firm by endorsing female founders and founders of color, filling the skies with unicorns as she did. “People have seen that investing in diverse people pays off,” she said.
Read: How top VC Miriam Rivera turned bets on underrepresented founders into multimillion-dollar profits
Speaking of unicorns, Aileen Lee, No. 2 at Seed 25, coined the term. But Lee told us that she was most proud of mentoring the founders: “Supporting people through tough times is actually one of the things I’m really proud of.”
Read: ‘It was scary’: How Aileen Lee launched her own venture capital firm after 13 years at Kleiner Perkins, and became one of the best in the business
Then there’s Garry Tan, who jumped 33 places this year in the Seed 100. He said, “A founder who is a great builder tends to be a magnet, attracting the smartest people.”
These three Seed 100 stars also told us how they achieved success in a world so full of competition.
How Jenny Fielding, the Face of Techstars, Became New York’s Most Connected Investor
How the quest for the ‘weird and wonderful’ led to Eric Paley’s initial investment in Uber and hundreds of other startups
Kevin Mahaffey started creating software when he was 8 years old. He is now the third seed investor.
But the list is also full of surprises, like football great Joe Montana, whose venture capital fund has quietly become a powerhouse.