Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists. Khosla was named the top venture capitalist on the Forbes Midas List in 2001 and has been listed multiple times since that time. As of January 2025, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$9.2 billion.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.
Stephen T. Jurvetson is an American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), he was an early investor in Hotmail, Memphis Meats, Mythic and Nervana Systems. He is currently a board member of SpaceX among others. He later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at DFJ.
Vinod Dham is an Indian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is known as the 'Father of the Pentium Chip' for his contribution to the development of Intel's Pentium micro-processor. He is also a mentor and advisor, and sits on the boards of companies, including startups funded through his India-based fund Indo-US Venture Partners, where he is the founding managing director.
Sevin Rosen Funds (SRF) is a Texas-based venture capital firm credited with pioneering the personal computing revolution in the 1980s and also venture investing in Dallas. It was established in 1981 by L. J. Sevin, a former Texas Instruments engineer, and Ben Rosen, and was one of the leading investors on the US West Coast.
Stephan Morais is a Portuguese British investor.
Greylock Partners, LLC is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in consumer and enterprise software.
Highland Capital Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco. Highland has raised over $4 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 280 companies, with 47 IPOs and 134 acquisitions.
Habib Haddad is a serial entrepreneur and early stage investor. He is currently the president and managing director of the E14 Fund that invests in spin-offs from MIT. Prior to that Habib has spent his career in startups as a founder and early employee.
James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.
Howard Lee Morgan is an American venture capitalist, philanthropist, angel investor, author, and contributor to Business Insider. He also serves as the chairman, CEO, director, board member or advisor for an assortment of companies including B Capital, Arca Group, Idealab, and Math for America. He has been listed on the Forbes 2009 list of Executives and Directors, was ranked #12 on CouldAve's Top 30 Most Respected Venture Capitalist for 2011 and #1 in Philadelphia.
Braigo is a Braille printer design. Braigo version 1.0 uses a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit, which includes a microprocessor with assorted components such as electric motors, sensors and actuators. Braigo v1.0 was designed by 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee in January 2014, as an entry in 7th grade school science fair project. The model was based on the PLOTT3R, a bonus model released with the EV3 kit and originally designed by Ralph Hempel. The cost was said to be about US$350 or 250 Euros for the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit and some extra commonly used hardware whereas a conventional Braille printer retails starting from about $1,900.
Women in venture capital or VC are investors who provide venture capital funding to startups. Women make up a small fraction of the venture capital private equity workforce. A widely used source for tracking the number of women in venture capital is the Midas List which has been published by Forbes since 2001. Research from Women in VC, a global community of women venture investors, shows that the percentage of female VC partners is just shy of 5 percent.
Sajan Pillai is an India-born American businessman and investor. He is the former CEO of UST, which he helped build into a company employing over 25,000 people. He is currently the founder, chairman, and CEO of McLaren Strategic Ventures.
Narendra K. Gupta was an Indian-American venture capital investor and technology entrepreneur. He founded the investment company Nexus Venture Partners, as well as various other investment and software firms. He was also CEO and president of Integrated Systems Inc. (ISI) for a decade and a half. In a career spanning over three decades he was recognized for his contributions to global technology and entrepreneurial ecosystems, and for venture capital investments in India.
Theresia Gouw is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor in the technology sector. She worked at Bain & Company, Release Software and Accel Partners before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm, in 2014. According to Forbes, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $500 million, primarily due to her involvement with Accel's early investment in Facebook.
Jack Abraham is an American businessperson, serial entrepreneur, investor, and the founding and managing partner of startup studio and investment fund Atomic.
Conrad Burke is an Irish physicist and entrepreneur.
Daniel Hoffer is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, known for his role as Co-Founder and previous Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the hospitality exchange service, CouchSurfing. Presently, Hoffer serves as Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Deep Venture Partners which is an early stage venture capital fund, and immediately prior to that role worked as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development at technology startup Hayden AI, a Series C stage startup backed by TPG.
