# Top 50 Hardware Angel Investors in United States in May 2026

## Jason Calacanis
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 30
- Stages: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Internet, E-Commerce

Jason Calacanis is the Founder and CEO of Inside.com and Launch. He previously worked at Weblogs as a Co-Founder and CEO.

## Wei Guo
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 23
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, Artificial Intelligence, Health Care

Wei Guo, the founding partner of UpHonest Capital, is an active angel investor in Silicon Valley, focusing on early-stage cross-sector investments. He founded Wei Fund in 2015 and UpHonest Capital Fund I in 2016, invested in well-known companies such as Hims&Hers(NYSE: HIMS), Vicarious Surgical(NYSE: RBOT), Knightscope (NASDAQ: KSCP), Checkr,Lime, Boom, Rescale, Dialpad and more. Since 2015, he has invested in over 400 Silicon Valley startups, over 76 companies with valuations greater than 100 million USD, and 23 portfolio companies that have successfully exited.

## Scott Banister
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 23
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, Internet, Mobile

Scott is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of IronPort and an early advisor and board member at PayPal.Scott Banister started his career as a pioneer in the email business. He was Founder and VP of Technology at ListBot, the largest ASP for business email list hosting. ListBot was acquired byMicrosoft. After ListBot, Scott spent his time working with other start-ups as a board member and investor. These start-ups include eVoice, creator of the first email-enabled home voicemail service, which was acquired by AOL in 2001. He served as VP of Ideas at idealab!, where he contributed numerous innovations, including the unique bid-for-placement search engine model that powers Overture. In December 2000, with Scott Weiss, Banister co-founded IronPort, an email appliance provider that was acquired in 2007 by Cisco for US$830 million.Scott Banister is co-founder and Chairman of Other private equity investments include Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, and Causes.com.Banister attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he dropped out in 1996 to move to Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with his wife Cyan.

## Wayne Chang
- Type: Angel
- Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Relevant deals: 20
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Internet

Wayne Chang (born August 3, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, film producer, and philanthropist. He is best known for founding Crashlytics, which in little over a year was acquired by Twitter for over $100 million in 2013 (later valued at $259.5 million at Twitter's IPO), creating i2hub, a popular filesharing network, his seedinvestments that include companies like JetSmarter, Draftkings, and Gusto, and his lawsuit against the Winklevoss brothers, who were famously depicted in The Social Network movie.

## Tim Draper
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 19
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, FinTech, Mobile

Tim Draper is the Founder of Draper Associates. He was a Member of the Advisory Board at Mode Media. He attended Harvard Business School.

## Lachy Groom
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 19
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, FinTech, Financial Services

i did some stuff at stripe. chairman of Compound.

## Dylan Taylor
- Type: Angel
- Location: Denver, Colorado, United States
- Relevant deals: 19
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Aerospace, Space Travel, Satellite Communication

Dylan Taylor is a global business leader, commercial astronaut, thought leader and philanthropist. Currently, Dylan serves as Chairman & CEO of Voyager Space, a multi-national space exploration firm focused on building the next generation of space infrastructure for NASA and other global space agencies.Dylan has been recognized by HarvardUniversity, SpaceNews, the BBC, the Financial Times, Pitchbook, CNBC, CNN and others as having played a seminal role in the growth of the private space industry. As an early-stage investor in more than 50 emerging space ventures, including Axiom, Kepler, York, Astrobotic, LeoLabs, Relativity, and Planet, Dylan is widely considered the most active private space investor in the world.Dylan’s technical background, global business experience and unbridled passion for space make him a unique figure within his industry. As a thought leader and futurist, he has written many popular pieces on the future of the space industry for Forbes, FastCompany, Newsweek, SpaceNews, The Space Review, and Space.com. As a speaker, Dylan has keynoted many of the major space conferences around the world and has appeared regularly on Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNBC.Dylan has extensive global business experience as both a board director and CEO in several industries, including advanced electronics, finance and real estate. He previously served as a Director for UMB Bank, a Fortune 500 company based in Kansas City and as a mutual fund director for the Jackson Funds where he oversaw assets of $8B across 130 distinct funds. He has also served in the roles of CEO, President and Board Director for multinational companies like Prudential PLC, Honeywell, Colliers and Jones Lang LaSalle. Dylan was recognized as a Fortune 1000 CEO with P&L responsibility in excess of $3B and operations encompassing 15,000 employees in over 60 countries. In addition, Dylan has participated in 4 IPOs over the course of his career. Dylan is a leading advocate of space manufacturing and the utilization of in-space resources to further space exploration and settlement. In 2017, he became the first private citizen to manufacture an item in space when the gravity meter he co-designed and commissioned was 3D printed on the International Space Station. The historic item is now housed in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.Dylan is an explorer of note. On December 11th, 2021 Dylan became just the 606th human to go to space as part of the crew of Blue Origin’s NewShepard Mission 19. Accordingly, Dylan earned his commercial astronaut wings with the FAA and his universal astronaut wings from the Association of Space Explorers.He is also one of only a handful of humans to have descended to the deepest part of the world’s oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench as part of the Limiting Factor Expedition in July of 2022. In that mission, Dylan descended with pilot Victor Vescovo to a depth in excess of 10,800 meters (35,500 feet) into an area of the Mariana Trench that had never been visited by humans. Dylan is the youngest human to have been to the deepest part of the world’s oceans and crossed the Karman line into Space. Dylan has been a member of the Explorers Club since 2014.Dylan maintains an extensive philanthropic impact on the space industry. In 2017, Dylan founded the nonprofit and social movement, Space for Humanity, which seeks to democratize space exploration and develop solutions to global issues through the scope of human awareness to help solve the world’s most intractable problems. Space for Humanity has successfully sent two citizen astronauts to space via Blue Origin including both the first Mexican-born woman (Katya Echazareta), and first African-born woman (Sara Sabry). Building upon his passion and support for the space industry, Dylan serves as a strategic advisor for both the Archmission and the Human Spaceflight Program and is a co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which promotes the growth of commercial space activity. Additionally, he is also a leading benefactor to the Brooke Owens Fellowship, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and Mission: Astro Access.Dylan is the founder and Chairman of Multiverse Media, an integrated global media company focused on science and technology, with an emphasis on space. Multiverse is the parent company of the popular space philosophy website 2211.world as well as the Ad Astra Dinners, a Jeffersonian-style dinner series featuring some of the world’s leading influencers discussing the future of humanity in space. Another subsidiary of Multiverse Media, Multiverse Publishing, publishes books by leading authors including Frank White, Isaac Asimov and Gerard K. O’Neill. Multiverse is also the executive producer of the documentary film, The High Frontier and the forthcoming film, Fortitude. For his influence as a global leader and his commitment to creating a positive impact on the world, Dylan has been honored with numerous personal and professional accolades in recent years. The World Economic Forum recognized Dylan as a Young Global Leader in 2011 and a full member of the World Economic Forum in 2014. That same year he was named a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. In 2020, Dylan was recognized by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with their top honor for business and finance, following in the footsteps of 2019’s inaugural winner, the late Paul Allen
and subsequent winners Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.Dylan Taylor earned an MBA in Finance and Strategy from the Booth School of Business at University of Chicago and holds a BS in Engineering from the honors college at the University of Arizona, where he graduated Tau Beta Pi and in 2018 was named Alumnus of the year. He is also a graduate of the Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century program at Harvard University.Dylan and his family reside in Denver, Colorado where he is active locally with Colorado Concern and the Colorado Spaceport. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys hiking, competing in triathlons and spending time outdoors. As a weekend warrior athlete, Dylan has more than 25 top ten finishes and 25 age group wins to his credit, and he regularly interviews world class athletes whom have shown extraordinary resilience as the host of the Legendary Podcast. He is married to legal expert, consultant and author Gabrielle V. Taylor with whom he has two teenage daughters.

## Scott Belsky
- Type: Angel
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 17
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Internet, SaaS

Scott Belsky joined Adobe as Chief Product Officer, Executive Vice President - Creative Cloud in 2017.Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, and investor. Scott co-founded Behance in 2006, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Millions of people use Behance to display their portfolios, as well as track and find top talent acrossthe creative industries. After Behance's acquisition, Scott served as Adobe's Vice President of Products, rebooting Adobe's mobile product strategy and leading Behance until 2016 when he became a full-time venture capitalist as a General Partner at Benchmark. Scott returned to his love for the creative world, and building products and teams full-time, as Chief Product Officer and EVP of Creative Cloud, at Adobe in late 2017. He continues to work with Benchmark as a Venture Partner, as well as several other early stage venture firms. Scott also manages a portfolio of over 150 private companies from his early investments and product advisory roles in companies including Pinterest, Uber, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, sweetgreen, and many others in the early stages.Scott is also the author of the bestselling books Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, April, 2010 and Oct 2018, respectively).Scott is also the founder of the 99U conference for leaders in the design world, and is an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower creative people and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. In 2010, Scott was also included in Fast Company's list of "100 Most Creative People in Business."Prior to founding Behance, Scott helped grow the Pine Street Leadership Development Initiative at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Scott was especially focused on organizational improvement and strengthening relationships with clients. Scott serves on the Advisory Board of Cornell University's Entrepreneurship Program and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. Scott and his family live in New York City and San Francisco.

## Marc Benioff
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 17
- Stages: Series A, Seed, Series B
- Focus: Software, Health Care, SaaS

Marc Benioff is Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce. Marc Benioff attended the University of Southern California.

## Daniel Curran
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 17
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: E-Commerce, Software, Mobile

Daniel Curran is the Founder and CEO at CustEx.com.

## Will Herman
- Type: Angel
- Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Relevant deals: 16
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Convertible Note
- Focus: Software, Mobile, Enterprise Software

Will Herman is an active angel investor, corporate director, author, and startup mentor. He was previously a serial entrepreneur, having started five companies, taking two of them public. Will is an adviser at the hardware incubator, Bolt, and a mentor at TechStars. He lives and works mostly in the Boston area.


## Shervin Pishevar
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 16
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Mobile, E-Commerce

Shervin Pishevar is the Co-Founder at Virgin Hyperloop.

## Kevin Mahaffey
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 16
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Enterprise Software

Kevin Patrick Mahaffey is the Founder of Lookout and SNR. He is also the Executive Chairman of Stork Club and an Investor.

## Auren Hoffman
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 15
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, Analytics, Internet

Auren Hoffman is the CEO and Chief Historian of SafeGraph and he was the CEO of Rapleaf.
Auren holds a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the UC Berkeley. He writes a blog called Summation.

## Sunmeet Jolly
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Jose, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 15
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Equity Crowdfunding
- Focus: Software, Internet, Artificial Intelligence

Founder and Patent holder - GROTU mobile app @ 101 Islands LLC. Angel investor in 40 pre-IPO technology startups. Frequently invited by accelerators and angel forums to Judge startup competitions and discuss technology innovation. Former IT Consulting industry executive who sold hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting services to Fortune 500companies working for Cap Gemini, HCL, L&T, NTT data.

## Bryan Rosenblatt
- Type: Angel
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 15
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: E-Commerce, Software, Retail

Bryan Rosenblatt (born July 4, 1989 in New York, New York, United States) is an American Venture Capitalist and entrepreneur. He is a Partner at Craft Ventures, a venture firm with over $2 billion AUM started by David Sacks. He is also a founder of Riverside Ventures, which he started in 2017, and a former executive at Reddit and Twitter. Hepreviously worked at Reddit as the Head of Sales. Bryan Rosenblatt attended the University of Connecticut School of Business and Charles University.

## Chris Sang
- Type: Angel
- Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Relevant deals: 15
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, E-Commerce, Mobile

Managing Partner, Chief Technology Officer, Venture Advisor, Global Investor

## Greg Castle
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 14
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality

Juan Gregorio Castillo Minyety (San Jose De Ocoa, 09 de junio 1986), mejor conocido por su nombre artístico Greg Castle, es un rapero y compositor Dominicano. Su estilo de música es generalmente como el trap latino afro Reggaeton y Denbow, pero también incorporó otros géneros como merengue, pop latín y House

## Justin Kan
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 14
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Financial Services, E-Commerce

Justin Kan is the Co-Founder of Fractal. He attended Yale University.

## Edward Lando
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 14
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Health Care

Edward Lando is the Managing Partner at Pareto Holdings.

## Mark Pincus
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 14
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Internet, Software, FinTech

Mark Pincus is the founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Zynga. He has served as our Chairman from April 2007 to March 2016 and the company's Executive Chairman since March 2016. He previously served as Chief Executive Officer from April 2007 to July 2013 and from April 2015 to March 2016, and as Chief Product Officer from April2007 to April 2014. In 2014, he founded superlabs, a San Francisco-based product lab focused on developing products that connect and empower people, which was acquired by Zynga in 2015. Pincus also founded Zynga.org in 2009, a non-profit organization dedicated to using social games for social good.From 2003 to 2007, Pincus served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Tribe.net, a company he launched and one of the first social networks in the industry. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Chairman of Support.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPRT), a help desk automation software company he founded, and he served as Chief Executive Officer and President from December 1997 to July 1999. From 1996 to 1997, he served as Chief Executive Officer of FreeLoader, Inc., a web-based news company he founded.Pincus also made founding investments in Napster, Twitter, and Facebook.Pincus graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is an angel investor in multiple Silicon Valley startups and regularly gives lectures to aspiring entrepreneurs.

## Naval Ravikant
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 14
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, FinTech, Blockchain

Naval Ravikant is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded Epinions (which went public as part of Shopping.com) and Vast.com. He is an active Angel investor, and have invested in dozens of companies, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Stack Overflow and Wanelo.

## Cyan Banister
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 13
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, Internet, Social Media

Cyan Banister is a partner at Founders Fund, where she invests across sectors and stages with a particular interest in augmented reality, fertility, heavily regulated industries and businesses that help people with basic skills find meaningful work. Prior to joining Founders Fund, Cyan was an active angel investor with a portfolio including Uber,Thumbtack, SpaceX, Postmates, EShares, Affirm and Niantic, creator of Pokémon GO. A self-taught engineer and entrepreneur, Cyan has held a number of technical leadership positions throughout her career. As an early employee at IronPort, which was acquired by Cisco, Cyan oversaw support infrastructure and performance for a global customer base. She has a passion for the arts and is a voracious film, documentary and media consumer.

## Jeffrey Schox
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 13
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Software

Jeff Schox is the founder of Schox Patent Group, a boutique patent firm focused on startups, and the founding partner at Schox Venture Capital, which invests $100-500K in clients of Schox Patent Group. Jeff is also the founding partner at Trucks Venture Capital, which invests $1-2M in startups that are building the future of transportation. Jeffhas made 100+ angel investments in startups, including Twilio (first investor, IPO), Cruise (acquired), Ambient (first investor), Celsee (acquired), eero (acquired), Helium, Luminous (first investor), Molekule (acquired), NeuMoDx (acquired), Omada, Vicarious (acquired), and Zendrive (first investor).

## Mark Cuban
- Type: Angel
- Location: Dallas, Texas, United States
- Relevant deals: 13
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence

Mark Cuban is the founder of Fireside, Chairman and Founding partner of AXS TV, and the Owner of Dallas Mavericks. Prior to that, he was the Co-Founder of Broadcast.com. Mrk attended the Indiana University Bloomington.

## David Tisch
- Type: Angel
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 12
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Internet, E-Commerce

David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, a New York City-based early stage investment fund. BoxGroup is an investor in over 200 seed-stage companies, including Vine, Blue Apron, Sunrise, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Behance, Handy and more. David is also the co-founder and Chairman of Spring, a mobile marketplace where customers shopdirectly within the app from a curated community of brands. Spring was named by Apple as one of the Best Apps of 2014.In 2014, David was named Head of Startup Studio at Cornell Tech, the University’s New York City-based graduate campus focused on digital technologies and the information economy. He is also Entrepreneur in Residence for Wharton’s Entrepreneurship Program.David is the co-founder of TechStars NYC and has served on numerous boards, including Mayor Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology, the Investor Board of Venture for America, and the Entrepreneurship board at NYU. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and New York University School of Law, and currently lives in New York City

## Jeff Seibert
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 12
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, SaaS, FinTech

As Senior Director of Product at Twitter, Jeff has led the company's consumer, developer, and publisher facing products, including Twitter for iOS, Android, and the Web, Fabric, Crashlytics, Answers, Digits, Twitter Kit, TweetDeck, Twitter's Publisher Platform, and Gnip.Previously, Seibert was Twitter’s Director of Developer Platformwhere he led Fabric, the company’s suite of mobile developer tools, as well as its enterprise Data Platform and Content Syndication efforts.Seibert was the co-founder and CEO of Crashlytics, an award-winning crash analysis service for iOS and Android apps. Crashlytics was acquired by Twitter in 2013 and has become an essential piece of the mobile developer toolchain - today powering over a million apps across well over two billion devices worldwide.Seibert co-founded Increo in 2007 and served as its COO and lead architect until its acquisition by Box in 2009. He subsequently oversaw the integration of Increo’s document preview and annotation technologies into Box’s cloud content platform.Seibert gained experience at Apple in both marketing and engineering capacities and led Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar series as Co-Coordinator. He was selected as a Mayfield Fellow in 2007 and received a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2008.Seibert is a frequent presenter on both entrepreneurship and technical topics and has lectured at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, as well as keynoted Twitter Flight, AppsWorld, AnDevCon, EclipseCon, and others. Find him on Twitter at @JeffSeibert.

## Arjun Sethi
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 12
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Financial Services, FinTech

Arjun Sethi is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and executive, as well as a Co-Founder of Tribe Capital.Tribe Capital is a top-quartile venture capital firm focused on capturing a perpetual edge in venture and crypto using artificial intelligence and data science. Some of its noteworthy investments include Apollo.io, Carta, Docker, Kraken,Relativity Space, and Shiprocket.Arjun was previously a Partner at Social Capital where he led the Venture Team consisting of six full time GPs with a broad focus on early stage investing in the consumer and enterprise sector. Arjun has a long history of sourcing, winning and leading early stage deals. Arjun’s investments at Social Capital include notable companies such as Front, Carta, Swarm (Sold to SpaceX), Slack, Cloud Kitchens and Relativity Space. Arjun's track record includes being recognized as one of the top 100 angels in Silicon Valley through advisory, direct, and secondary investments across various stages. He has invested in high-profile names such as Frax, Snapchat, Lyft, OpenDoor, and Gusto. Prior to his work in venture, Arjun co-founded and sold two successful companies. After his second company, MessageMe, was acquired by Yahoo, he joined the executive team, where he was instrumental in driving mobile product usage from 100M to 1B monthly uniques and was a Board Observer on Alibaba. Before that, Arjun was the Founder and CEO of LOLapps, a mobile gaming company that grew to 100M monthly users and sold for $240M.

## Mitchell Kapor
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Mobile, Software, Education

Mitchell David Kapor was the founder of Lotus Development Corporation (/organization/lotus-development-corporation) and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" often credited with making the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. He is known as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist,and philanthropist.Kapor has been the Chair of the In 1990 Kapor's new company On Technology introduced their new product On Location, an application designed for the Macintosh that contained an indexing system that permit quick retrieval and display of text on the Mac's hard disk. "We think we're being cagey by bringing it out on the Mac first," Kapor said. "It's a richer medium than MS-DOS, and if we have a hot product in the Mac market, it will be easier to get into the PC market."In 2001, Kapor founded the Open Source Applications Foundation, where he is now working on Chandler, a modern personal information manager built using open source tools and methods.In 2006, Kapor founded his latest startup, 

## Alexis Ohanian
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Mobile, E-Commerce

Alexis Ohanian, born April 24, 1983, is an entrepreneur and investor in Brooklyn, NY, best known as the co-founder and executive chair of reddit, a platform for online communities to share links and have discussions. While he learned his earliest lessons in leadership and web design from his high school Quake 2 clan and Everquest guild, Alexiscontinued his official studies at the University of Virginia, where he met his future co-founder Steve Huffman during freshman year move-in day. This would lead to the founding of reddit, which he recounted along with many lessons for entrepreneurs, in his national bestseller, Without Their Permission.At UVA, Alexis majored in business and history with a minor in German. Though he had originally planned to become an immigration lawyer, he experienced an epiphany in his junior year (while sitting in a Waffle House) that led him to the realization that he didn't want to practice law. Instead he convinced his best friend Steve to start a company with him.The pair traveled to Cambridge, MA during their senior year spring break to hear Paul Graham give a talk titled "How to Start a Startup." After the lecture, Alexis invited Graham out for a drink so he and Steve could pitch Graham on their business idea. Graham agreed, loved the idea, and suggested they apply to a new seed stage venture firm he'd launched called Y Combinator.
Alexis and Steve's original plan was to build an infrastructure that would allow people to order food from their cell phones. Though the idea was rejected, Alexis and Steve were invited to join the first class of Y Combinator, on the condition that they'd come up with a new concept. The next idea they pitched to Graham would become reddit.com.

## Eric Kwan
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, FinTech, E-Commerce

Eric Kwan - Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Locus Ventures

## Peter Thiel
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Series A, Seed, Series B
- Focus: Software, FinTech, Financial Services

Peter Thiel Is The Member, Board of Directors At Facebook. Founder at Breakout Labs.

## Paul Buchheit
- Type: Angel
- Location: Mountain View, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, Health Care, E-Commerce

Paul Buchheit co-founded social network aggregator FriendFeed, along with three other former Google employees. He is also an investor in FriendFeed and participated in a $5 million Series A round in February 2008.He was the 23rd employee at Google, where he created Gmail and implemented many of its innovative features. He developed the originalprototype of Google AdSense, and was responsible for Google's famous "Don't be evil" motto in a meeting.

## bumpkins profile
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Health Care, Biotechnology, Software

blah - teh software was teh busted and they didn't want to fix it or hire someone to fix it, odd folks, these.

## Elad Gil
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 11
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence

Elad Gil is the Co-Founder of Color Genomics. He previously worked at Twitter as a Vice President. Elad Gil attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

## Clark Landry
- Type: Angel
- Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Angel
- Focus: Software, Internet, Advertising

Clark Landry is the Managing Partner of Clover Leaf Ventures.Most recently, Clark was co-founder and COO at CESPPA, a cybersecurity company. Formerly, Clark was co-founder and COO at Maple Media (raised $30 million from private equity investors), co-founder and executive chairman at SHIFT (acquired by Brand Networks), co-founder and CEO at TopLevel Domain Holdings (now Minds + Machines - publicly-traded on the London Stock Exchange's AIM), co-founder and CMO at TagWorld (acquired by Viacom). Clark was a founding investor of Gradient X, a mobile DSP (acquired by SingTel), Traffic Marketplace, an advertising network (acquired by Vivendi), Adconion Media Group, a provider of digital media advertising solutions (acquired by Amobee), Conversion Logic, an advertising attribution company, and CREXi, a commercial real estate marketplace.Clark holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Yale University.

## Owen Van Natta
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Mobile, Software, Internet

Owen Van Natta is currently Founder and Managing Partner of Prefix Capital, an early stage investment fund founded in 2019. Owen is also a Founder and Managing Partner at 415 Investments. Previously, Owen was the Executive Vice President of Business at Zynga. He was responsible for the company's revenue strategy, corporate development,international expansion, and brand. Owen was also a member of Zynga's Board of Directors.Before Zynga, Owen served as Chief Executive Officer of MySpace, where he was responsible for all aspects of the company's strategic vision and the execution of its global business initiatives. Owen joined the MySpace team after serving as the Chief Executive Officer of Project Playlist, a music sharing website allowing users to search for music, create custom playlists, and share the content with friends.Prior to Project Playlist, Van Natta was the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, where he focused on revenue operations, business development, and strategic partnerships.Earlier in his career, Owen was Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon.com, where he managed global marketing programs and strategic partnerships. He was part of the founding team of A9.com, the Amazon.com search company, and was responsible for site operations and sponsored-link advertising.Owen holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

## Sam Altman
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Internet, E-Commerce

Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Sam was previously the Chairman of Y Combinator, a leading silicon valley startup accelerator.

## Larry Braitman
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, E-Commerce, Media and Entertainment

Larry Braitman - Angel Investor; Advisor @ Braitman & Company

## Kevin Lin
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Gaming, Information Technology, Video Games

Lin is the COO of Twitch, the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers. He was instrumental in the 2011 launch of the platform when he joined Justin.tv in 2008. His role included attracting the site’s largest broadcasters and building out the partnership team among other activities which have helped grow the Twitch brand.Currently more than 100 million gamers gather every month on Twitch to broadcast live video, watch and chat about gaming, making the platform an industry leader.

## Avichal Garg
- Type: Angel
- Location: Stanford, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Blockchain, Financial Services

Avichal is Managing Partner at Electric Capital. He is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive. Avichal sold two companies and was most recently Director of Product at Facebook, which acquired his company Spool in 2012. He previously worked at Google on search ranking and ads ranking, is part-time at YCombinator, and an active angelinvestor.Avichal's firm, Electric Capital, focuses on cryptocurrencies that are rooted in technological utility. Electric performs deep technological diligence, such as compiling code, profiling nodes, and analyzing blockchains with in-house software. The founders of Electric have started and sold five companies, have been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2013, and are investors in Anchor, Bitwise, Chia, Coda, dYdX, Dfinity, Oasis, Thunder and many other crypto projects.

## Bashar Hamood
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Angel
- Focus: Information Technology, Software, Mobile Apps

Bashar Hamood is a result oriented professional with versatile experience across diverse organizational domains. He is well versed in the development of marketing strategies, branding, direct marketing, new products/brands launches, analysis, reporting, and positioning.He is an entrepreneur and self-starter with expansive experience in brandawareness and development, community outreach.Bashar is a versatile business manager with proven competencies in optimizing team dynamics uniting diverse agenda to common goal and harnessing strategic and operational drivers to deliver results.He has a strong analytical mind with rigorous study for each case and the output of each variation for each parameter.Bashar loves to take risk and new challenges.

## Esther Dyson
- Type: Angel
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Health Care, Medical, Software

Esther Dyson - Founder @ Way to Wellville

## Max Levchin
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Series A, Seed, Series B
- Focus: FinTech, Financial Services, Mobile

Max Levchin is an investor and advisor to emerging technology companies. He was previously the chairman and chief executive officer of HVF, a startup lab focused on extracting insights from recordable information.Levchin co-founded Confinity Inc. in December 1998, and served as the Chief Technology Officer and a director. He also foundedNetMeridian Software, a developer of early Internet applications Levchin also serves as chairman of the boards of directors of Yelp Inc. and Kaggle Inc., and as a director of Evernote Corporation.

## Hesham Zreik
- Type: Angel
- Location: Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Relevant deals: 10
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
- Focus: Information Technology, Software, Internet

Hesham has been ranked #39 out of top 50 investors (Forbes 2018) based on investment and successful exits. Hesham has invested in +100 startups. He has co-founded more than 40 startups. He has a passion for building innovative start-ups around the principle of developing simple solutions to challenging problems. He is multilingual and can speak,read and write Arabic, English, French. He has also some good knowledge in German and Spanish.
Hesham is a founder and CEO of FasterCapital. FasterCapital is an online incubator who has border-less reach. Hesham has already co-founded (as a technical cofounder) and invested as an angel investor in more than 40 startups and has helped expand FasterCapital to have more than 1000 regional partners, a network of 1000 mentors, +500 offices worldwide and more than 400 startups. Hesham has invested and helped improve and refine the product in each of the 40 incubated startups.
During his work at FasterCapital, Hesham has co-founded:
- co-founded Edunoor.com: online learning platform with social components.
- invested in Dooet.com: a discovery and search engine for mobile applications and other content.
- invested in Letuscloud.com: Bridging the gap between enterprises and virualization
- invested in abcmob.com: Mobile business application. 18 sectors already covered.
- invested in Mobayle.com: an instant AppStore creator and customizer
- invested in Meody.com: Cross platform messenger with focus on enterprises and operators.
- invested in TVlize.com: a platform for social and engaging TV
- He also cofounded and invested in Nakkeb.com, BeamGift.com, PickTaxi.com, MobAdv.com, Bazarmaker.com, puttag.com, fulhost.com, Entablet.com, PinProfile.com, mp3ready.com, BookThatbook.com Newsanalyse.com, B2Butterfly.com and many more. He is also a mentor for more than 50 companies. Hesham started his first company ZGroup Mobile in 2002 with less than $20/month and grow it to reach a valuation of $2.5-$3.25 million in 2005 by Public company Incagold plc (it would have been the first company in MENA region to be acquired by a public company). ZGroup Mobile is a developer and publisher of mobile content (mobile games, mobile apps, mobile music, mobile videos) and services. He has been ranked 7th in Baccalaureate tests among 200,000th participants. He has completed his engineering degree at HIAST then he has done an MBA at Edinburgh business school and a Master in computer information science at AABFS.

## Vishal Rao
- Type: Angel
- Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Relevant deals: 9
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology

Advisory CTO and Angel Investor

## Justin Waldron
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 9
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, E-Commerce, Mobile

Justin Waldron is Co-Founder & President of Playco, and previously Co-Founder / EVP of Product of Zynga, the world's largest mobile game company. Zynga IPO'd in 2011 with a $10 billion valuation and over $1b in annual revenue. Justin is an angel investor in Lambda School, Substack, and 60+ other companies. He mentors youngentrepreneurs at The Thiel Foundation's Thiel Fellowship program.

## Charlie Songhurst
- Type: Angel
- Location: Greater Seattle Area, Washington, United States
- Relevant deals: 9
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence

Charles Songhurst is a founding partner of Katana Capital, a long-short equity hedge fund. He also runs the Songhurst Group, which holds assets in a variety of private companies.Charles ran corporate strategy for Microsoft and focused on partnering and M&A. He was involved in the Yahoo acquisition and commercial deal, and the Skypeacquisition. Before running corporate strategy, Charles was focused on the emergence of Google and the growth of the search industry.Prior, Charles was an analyst at McKinsey & Company in London. Charles received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in politics, philosophy, and economics.

## Georges Harik
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 9
- Stages: Series A, Seed, Angel
- Focus: Software, Artificial Intelligence, Mobile

Georges Harik was Director of Googlettes, a start-up incubator that operated inside Google, and a Distinguished Engineer at Google. As Director of Googlettes, his team was responsible for the product management and strategy efforts surrounding many starting Google initiatives including Gmail, Google Talk, Google Video, Picasa, Orkut, Google Groupsand Google Mobile.

## Jaan Tallinn
- Type: Angel
- Location: Tallinn, Harjumaa, Estonia
- Relevant deals: 9
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Artificial Intelligence, Internet

Jaan Tallinn is the Co-founder of Future of Life Institute.

# About Shizune
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