The Midas Seed List 2024: Congrats Ed on 3rd Annual Top 10 ranking of Top 25 Seed Investors worldwide
Conviction defines the best seed investors. They spot the winners of tomorrow with little more to go on than a pitch and the founder’s passion. The venture capitalists on the Midas Seed List have proven their ability time and again to uncover such hidden gems.
In partnership with TrueBridge, Forbes today reveals its third annual ranking of the top 25 seed stage investors globally. The top three represent an array of approaches to backing founders at the earliest stage. Silicon Valley fixture Pejman Nozad has again claimed his spot at the top of the list for the second year in a row. David Frankel of Founder Collective climbed to second place thanks to early bets on restaurant software provider Olo, and defense startup Shield AI, among others. While another early backer of Korean e-commerce giant Coupang, Ben Sun of Primary Venture Partners, has advanced to third place thanks to investments in weight-loss app Noom and primary care startup K Health.
The Midas Seed List is heavily dominated by American investors, with only four VCs coming from outside the U.S. Three of them are newcomers: Adjacent Venture Capital founder Nico Wittenborn, Guo Wei of Uphonest Capital and Jesse Walden of Variant. Satya Patel of Homebrew Capital returns to the list after dropping off in 2023.
To qualify for Midas Seed, investors must have a portfolio companies that have gone public or been acquired for at least $50 million, or have a private valuation that is more than $100 million. For a deal to be Midas Seed eligible, it must currently hold a valuation that has tripled since the VC’s original investment. Only investors from true seed firms are considered for Midas Seed; multistage players or angel investors are not eligible. The list is capped at one individual investor per fund. Midas Seed is a data-driven list compiled through a combination of public data sources and firm submissions.