Venture capital is swiftly becoming one of the most popular investment vehicles globally because of how popular it has been within Silicon Valley tech culture. If you look at some of the biggest companies today, they could not have reached the heights that they have reached without the vision of some of the world’s best venture capitalists.
If you are somebody who makes at least $200,000 per year, you can become an angel investor similar to a venture capitalist. If you do not yet know how and where to invest your money — here is a comprehensive look at how the pros do it.
Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman is arguably the best venture capitalist in Silicon Valley to learn from. Not only did he gain all of the knowledge in investing and scaling companies from his own experiences as an entrepreneur being a co-founder in Paypal and LinkedIn, but he has invested in companies such as Facebook, Funny or Die, and Treehouse.
Reid Hoffman argues that for a company to become prominent in the marketplace, they have to focus on getting big as fast as possible even if they have to sacrifice profitability in the short term. Even though other venture capitalists are not so quick to agree with this idea, it has certainly worked out for him.
Masayoshi Son
It would be a sin to write about prominent venture capitalists without writing about Masayoshi Son, the Japanese conglomerate known as SoftBank. What makes Son and Softbank different from other venture capitalists is that they take on the C-Corp structure. They are not a firm that has partners in it.
Masayoshi Son has created a reputation of being one of the best investors in the world when he invested in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company that no one believed in at the time to great success. Alibaba is currently one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world now.
Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla has been one of the first figures to arrive in the Silicon Valley scene. The Stanford alumni are not only the men behind the wildly successful Khosla Ventures, but he is one of the men behind Sun Microsystems as well.
Vinod has given many talks about the importance of having pragmatic openness when it comes to deciding which companies to invest in, arguing that failure comes very naturally when it comes to investing. One should not be afraid of it. He says that if you fail at something or if an investment of yours goes terrible, just make another investment or look for more angles.
Michael Moritz
Once again, it would be impossible to write a comprehensive list of fantastic venture capital firms without acknowledging the firm’s probably the all-time best – Sequoia Capital. Michael Moritz is one of the senior partners.
Being the only partner in the Silicon Valley firm that hails from the United Kingdom, Mr. Mortiz had to prove his shrewd investment insight to gain the recognition that he wanted from his peers. Mr. Mortiz argues that the best thing about venture capital is working with small teams run by young entrepreneurs. Their energy is attractive, and their fresh perspectives on business are invigorating.
M13 Investments
Of course, it is always good to find inspiration from the best venture capitalists in the world that we mentioned above, but if you want to invest alongside the pros and not have to form your strategy, consider looking at M13 Investments. M13 Investments is one of the fastest rising VC firms out of the Greater Los Angeles Area and makes waves in the area’s startup scene.
Venture capital is hard, but if you learn to invest like the best, a robust investment portfolio is within your reach.
