This year marks the 15th anniversary of the modern Forbes Midas List. To celebrate, we’re looking back at the investors on our first ever Midas List and the companies propelling them up the list.
Fifteen years ago, the companies shaping markets demonstrated that they had officially rebounded from the global financial crisis. We saw a surge in dealmaking and fundraising, as well as renewed investor enthusiasm for high-profile tech IPOs. The concept of unicorns began to solidify as modern-day juggernauts like Facebook (now Meta), Twitter (now X), Instagram, LinkedIn and Airbnb rose to record-breaking valuations. As has been the case since, the top investors on the 2011 Midas List were those with strong picking skills who foresaw the coming rise of consumer internet startups.
A lot has changed since then, and while we have seen a number of newcomers make their way onto the list over the years, only a handful of the investors on the 2011 Midas List have maintained their spot on the list today. An even smaller portion of investors have climbed the ranks and remained at the top, demonstrating just how difficult it is to place the right bets time and again. Below, we’ll take a closer look at some of the investors on the 2011 Midas List and where they are today.
Theresia Gouw, Acrew Capital
2011: #93
In 2011, the Midas List featured just two women: Deborah Farrington of StarVest and Theresia Gouw. At the time, Gouw was a Managing Partner at Accel, where she focused on investments in consumer tech and cybersecurity. She had played a pivotal role in Accel’s early investments in Facebook, including its 2005 lead of Facebook’s $12.7 million Series A. Gouw was also an early backer of a number of startups that were eventually taken private, including cybersecurity startup Imperva, which was acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2019 for $2.1 billion, as well as Trulia, which was taken private by Zillow for $2.5 billion in 2015. After more than a decade at Accel, Gouw went on to become a founding partner at two additional venture firms, Aspect Ventures and Acrew Capital.
Gouw is considered a pioneer for women in the venture capital industry. Since being named to the first Midas List she has added a number of accolades to her resume, including being featured as one of TIME Magazine’s 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech in 2013, Forbes’ Most Powerful Women in 2018 and America’s Self-Made Women in 2024. While the industry has far to go, there are more than five times as many women on this year’s Midas List, including Gouw’s partner, Acrew Capital cofounder and partner Lauren Kolodny.
Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners
2011: #3 | 2025: #2
A renowned entrepreneur, venture capitalist and philanthropist, Reid Hoffman has been instrumental to the evolution of Silicon Valley’s tech landscape. Hoffman began his career at Apple shortly after graduating from Oxford University’s Wolfson College before becoming PayPal’s COO in early 2000. He then went on to cofound LinkedIn in 2003, which became one of the first major social media IPOs in 2011. The company listed at an $8 billion valuation before ultimately being acquired by Microsoft in 2016 for $26.2 billion. By the time the 2011 Midas List was published, Hoffman had joined Greylock Partners and led a number of early-stage investments in consumer technology companies. He landed the #3 spot on the 2011 list with investments in well-known companies like Facebook and Groupon, in addition to his continued involvement with LinkedIn.
Over the years, Hoffman has been a vocal advocate for responsible AI development and has helped start a number of AI ventures. In 2016, he was among the first donors to OpenAI, and in 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI alongside DeepMind cofounder, friend and colleague Mustafa Suleyman. Earlier this year, he launched Manas AI, a drug discovery startup leveraging AI for cancer research. At #2 on this year’s Midas List, Hoffman has been one of the very few investors who has proven year after year that he can anticipate trends and make investments that not only generate strong returns but also have word-changing potential.
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
2011: #71 | 2025: #7
With the familiarity of Vinod Khosla’s name today, it may be hard to believe that he was ranked #71 on the 2011 Midas List. This is in part because many of the companies that helped skyrocket him to the top – like OpenAI, DoorDash, Instacart and Rubrik – did not yet exist. It is also partly a result of how far ahead of the curve he tends to be.
Khosla has made a name for himself as a radical, risk-taking investor focused on the earliest stages of a company’s journey. He often concentrates on areas with high potential for positive social impact, like climate tech, nuclear fusion and automation and AI. While many of these technologies are now considered mainstream, Khosla has been investing in them for decades. He was one of the earliest investors in Square (now Block) and OpenAI, well before they grew into the tech giants they are today. He turned a $2.75 million investment in Juniper Networks into $7 billion and generated billions more through wins like Cerent, Siara and Excite. His willingness to make bold bets has consistently placed him ahead of major technological shifts and helped him deliver strong returns.
Doug Leone, Sequoia
2011: #11 | 2025: #7
With a knack for understanding people and what motives them, Doug Leone landed a sales job at Sun Microsystems right out of college. At Sun, he learned the core tenets that turned him into one of the most accomplished investors of all time: grit when stumbling upon obstacles, humility when faced with failure, and the ability to take calculated risks. These attributes helped Leone land a gig with Sequoia in 1988, where he ultimately became a managing partner and led the firm’s expansion into China and India.
At Sequoia’s helm for over 25 years, Leone led several notable investments for the firm, including familiar names like Palantir, ServiceNow, Nubank, Medallia, Snowflake, Wiz and RingCentral. Over the years, many of the companies Leone has backed have yielded strong returns, such as WhatsApp’s $19 billion sale to Facebook in 2024. His willingness to support founders from diverse and often unconventional backgrounds, coupled with a hands-on approach to mentorship, helped him cement his reputation as a trusted and principled leader in the industry.
Danny Rimer, Index Ventures
2011: #59 | 2025: #95
Danny Rimer’s move to the Bay Area during the birth of Web 1.0 in the 1990s ignited a passion for technology that drove him to work alongside many of the world’s most creative founders. An eternally curious fan of design and art, his first tech venture involved digitizing and selling images of famous artwork, establishing exclusive deals with galleries like the Louvre and Uffizi Gallery. Today, Rimer’s investments focus on generational companies that leverage technology to influence how we interact and shape our culture.
Rimer joined Index Ventures in 2002 to open its London office, and he later led the firm’s expansion into San Francisco. He is one of fewer than 20 investors to have made the Midas List a total of 11 times, first appearing in 2011 for his investments in Last.fm and MySQL, which sold for $280 million and $1 billion, respectively. In 2013, he led Figma’s $3.9 million seed round, becoming the first institutional investor in the company. More recently, he invested in innovative consumer and design-focused companies such as Etsy, Farfetch, Glossier, Patreon and Discord.
Peter Thiel, Founders Fund
2011: #7 | 2025: #3
By the early 2000s, Peter Thiel had already become an iconic tech mogul. He co-founded PayPal in 1998 and Palantir Technologies in 2003, two highly respected and valuable companies with a combined market cap of nearly $350 billion today. But believe it or not, that’s not what he is best known for. In 2004, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor when he made a $500,000 investment in the company for a 10.2% stake. This move proved highly lucrative over the years, as Facebook’s valuation soared to $104 billion by the time the company went public in 2012. When the 2011 Midas List was published, Thiel was a Silicon Valley staple and placed seventh on the list.
Over the years, Thiel has built on his early success with significant early investments in a wide variety of household names, including Airbnb, Stripe, Spotify, Twilio and SpaceX. Building off of his legacy as Facebook’s first investor, today, he continues to provide support to young companies and entrepreneurs seeking to take their ventures to the next level. The Thiel Fellowship was established in 2010 to award $100,000 to individuals under 23 years of age to pursue entrepreneurial ventures instead of attending college. He also launched Breakout Labs, which provides grants to early-stage science startups in an attempt to bridge the funding gap for innovative companies conducting pioneering research that may not generate strong short-term returns. He is one of the only investors who has made the Midas List every year, and this year, he came in as #3.
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
2011: #12 | 2025: #9
Fred Wilson is known for his contrarian approach to investing, often entering disruptive sectors when others are hesitant. He emphasizes the importance of investing in companies that foster community and engagement, particularly through companies leveraging decentralized networks like social media platforms and crypto companies. Wilson founded Union Square Ventures in 2003 and quickly got to work leading Series A rounds for Indeed, Twitter, Etsy and Zynga, making the firm one of the earliest investors in several groundbreaking platforms that would go on to deliver substantial returns for investors.
Among Wilson’s other investments are Stripe, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack and Carta. A strong proponent of blockchain technology, Wilson also led Union Square Ventures’ $5 million investment in Coinbase in 2013, which was later valued at nearly $6 billion upon the company’s direct listing in 2021. Since his debut on the Midas List in 2011 at #11, Wilson has been one of the most consistent investors, appearing on the list every year and only ranking outside of the top 50 investors twice.
