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8 Up-And-Coming Midas List Firms

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Like the venture capital world itself, the Midas List leaves little room for new players on the field. But there are newer firms that we find create much cause for excitement, whether they’re brand new to the List or steadily climbing to the top.

Here are our picks of firms to watch from this year’s List, as well as two seed stage managers not yet on Midas (Founder Collective and IA Ventures) that we’re betting will continue to excel.

Canvas Venture Fund

Canvas arrived in 2013 as a spin-out of Morgenthaler Ventures, starting with a $175 million fund focused on early-stage investing in the financial technology (fintech), online marketplace, new enterprise, and digital health sectors. Canvas is managed by three Morgenthaler VCs, Rebecca Lynn (#23), Gary Little, and Gary Morgenthaler, and fourth general partner Paul Hsiao (previously with New Enterprise Associates). Following her nomination in 2013 to the Midas Brink List, Lynn came in strong for her first Midas appearance with investments in LendingClub (IPO 2014) along with the still-private Evernote (valued over $1.0 billion) and digital health services provider Practice Fusion. Canvas Venture Fund is a new VC firm - started by a tight-knit team of VC veterans - and given Lynn's notable showing on the Midas List, is clearly off to an impressive start.

Felicis Ventures

As one of TrueBridge’s first identified Brink List investors back in 2011, Felicis Ventures Founder and Managing Director Aydin Senkut (#39) has made good on his potential with two straight Midas List appearances. Founded in 2010, the seed-stage firm has kept both its funds airtight and access constrained, investing only in companies poised to reinvent core markets (such as SaaS and financial services) but keeping flexible in stage. As a former Googler and well-respected “super-angel” investor, Senkut has taken his venture investing to new heights this year with deals including Adyen B.V., the global multichannel payments company headquartered in the Netherlands; Twitch, acquired by Amazon for $970 million; and two private billion-dollar companies, Credit Karma and Shopify. Senkut and colleagues Sundeep Peechu and Renata Streit Quintini are known for getting deep in the trenches of deals, while new Managing Director Wesley Chan holds great promise, too. You can bet on seeing the “founder friendly” Felicis well into the future.

Foundation Capital

Like Canvas, Foundation Capital arrived on the scene as a recently refreshed firm, with General Partner Charles Moldow (#56) at the helm. Based in Silicon Valley, the Foundation team is comprised entirely of operators-turned-investors aimed at building the firm they would have wanted as founders. Specializing in fintech, martech (marketing technology and services), and consumer-focused companies, Moldow’s portfolio includes two of last year’s fintech stars and top-10 IPOs: lending marketplace LendingClub and small-business lender OnDeck Capital. With several additions to its team this year, and a reputation for working shoulder-to-shoulder with its portfolio companies, Foundation Capital is a firm to keep on the radar.

The Social+Capital Partnership

The Palo Alto-based Social+Capital Partnership made its second appearance on the List this year with General Partner Mamoon Hamid. The firm was founded in 2011 by Facebook veteran Chamath Palihapitiya, alongside seasoned USVP investors and Kauffman Fellow graduates Hamid and Ted Maidenberg, one of TrueBridge’s picks for the 2015 Brink List. With prior investments from Peter Thiel, John Doerr, and Reid Hoffman, the firm achieves its mission to form a partnership of philanthropists, technologists, and venture capitalists. Some of the firm’s notable deals include Box.com (IPO 2015) and Slack, the company that stunned everyone with its billion-dollar knock-out valuation, which it earned in just under a year.

Thrive Capital

Founded by Josh Kushner three years ago, when Kushner was just 26, Thrive Capital is known to keep a low profile. But with that silence, Thrive has become almost ninja-like in its strategy and precision. Raising a total $650 million across three funds, including investments from Princeton University and Wellcome Trust, Thrive is putting money to work in some of the biggest startups to date, including Spotify, Warby Parker, Instagram (acq. by Facebook for $1.0 billion), and Twitch (acq. by Yahoo! for $970 million). With two of its partners identified as up-and-coming investors on the Midas Brink List (Kushner in 2012 and Chris Paik this year), to say that Thrive is on the up and up would be a massive understatement.

Wing Ventures

As another nearly new Midas List firm, Wing Ventures is also a recent addition to venture. But its founders/partners Gaurav Garg (#38) and Peter Wagner (#93) are by no means amateur company builders. As one of this year’s biggest Midas movers, Garg’s investments in Aliph (the makers of Jawbone wearables), cyber security company FireEye (IPO 2013), and Ruckus Wireless (IPO 2012) helped float him to the top of the List, while Wagner’s hits with Fusion-io (IPO 2011), Nimble Storage, Inc. (IPO 2013), and Opower, Inc. (IPO 2014) brought him to a Midas encore. Wing Ventures keeps its strategy simple but purposeful, with a focus on three key sectors (data, mobile, and cloud) and their areas of intersection.

Founder Collective

The New York City- and Boston-based Founder Collective is a seed-stage firm that stays true to its name: every one of its investors was once a tech company founder. With a team including recent Brink Listers David Frankel and Eric Paley, Founder Collective grew as a community of founders-turned-angel investors itching to roll up their sleeves and get back into company building. Since its start in 2009, the firm has landed early into a number of promising tech companies, including Uber (the ride-share company valued at over $41 billion), Optimizely (the web-testing company with some 8,000 customers as of last fall), SeatGeek (the sports and concert ticket search engine gunning for StubHub), and Coupang (one of the largest e-commerce companies in Asia, on track to become the Amazon of Korea).

IA Ventures

Founded in 2009, IA Ventures was one of the few to invest in Big Data before it ever got ‘big.’ With Founder and early Brink Lister Roger Ehrenberg at the lead, the firm took an early bet on seed stage data companies such as Digital Ocean, the scrappy cloud provider going head-to-head with goliaths Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and UK-based Transferwise, the peer-to-peer money transfer service valued at $1.0 billion. With the most recent addition to its team, John Hadl (previously with U.S. Venture Partners), IA Ventures is set to continue revolutionizing data platforms and processes with its laser sector focus, even in the crowded seed pool.

Click here for complete Midas coverage, including the full list of 100 top tech investors, videos, features and more.

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