{"id":308768,"date":"2019-04-03T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T11:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=308768"},"modified":"2019-04-03T13:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T11:40:00","slug":"this-south-african-lost-40-of-his-savings-overnight-and-is-now-one-of-the-worlds-top-investors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/308768\/this-south-african-lost-40-of-his-savings-overnight-and-is-now-one-of-the-worlds-top-investors\/","title":{"rendered":"This South African lost 40% of his savings overnight – and is now one of the world’s top investors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forbes has released its annual Midas list<\/a> <\/strong>for 2019, looking at the world\u2019s most successful venture capitalists.<\/p>\n

To make the list, investors are ranked by their portfolio companies that have gone public or been acquired for at least $200 million over the past five years, or that have raised additional funding at a valuation of $400 million or more.<\/p>\n

Forbes said that it placed a premium on newer exits, as well as early-stage returns.<\/p>\n

The Midas list is produced after reviewing the submissions of hundreds of partners across dozens of firms each year, it said.<\/p>\n

As in previous years, the 2019 list was dominated by American and Chinese investors with Alibaba remaining the top driver of value for Midas List investors following its $174 billion IPO.<\/p>\n

Sequoia China\u2019s Neil Shen, retained the number one spot after backing leading Chinese tech companies like Alibaba and JD.com and e-commerce site Pinduoduo.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s joined by a record number of Chinese investors this year \u2013 21 all told \u2013 including top-ranked newcomer Kathy Xu (Xu Xin). Xu is one of 12 women on the 2019 Midas list, a record number.<\/p>\n

Rounding out the top three is chairman on Benchmark’s Peter Fenton, and Bill Gurley – one of Uber\u2019s best-known and most controversial venture capital investors.<\/p>\n

Top 10 venture capitalists<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/th>\nName<\/th>\nCompany<\/th>\nNotable Deal<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/strong><\/td>\nNeil Shen<\/td>\nSequoia Capital China<\/td>\nAlibaba<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/strong><\/td>\nPeter Fenton<\/td>\nBenchmark<\/td>\nElastic<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/strong><\/td>\nBill Gurley<\/td>\nBenchmark<\/td>\nUber<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/strong><\/td>\nJim Goetz<\/td>\nSequoia Capital<\/td>\nWhatsApp<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/strong><\/td>\nJP Gan<\/td>\nQiming Venture Partners<\/td>\nMeitu<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/strong><\/td>\nKathy Xu<\/td>\nCapital Today<\/td>\nJD.Com<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/strong><\/td>\nHans Tung<\/td>\nGGV Capital<\/td>\nWish<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/strong><\/td>\nMary Meeker<\/td>\nBond Capital<\/td>\nSpotify<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/strong><\/td>\nNeeraj Agrawal<\/td>\nBattery Ventures<\/td>\nCoupa<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/strong><\/td>\nEric Paley<\/td>\nGounder Collective<\/td>\n\u00a0The Trade Desk<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Top South African investor<\/strong><\/p>\n

South African-born Roelof Botha was ranked at 23rd on this year’s Midas List.<\/p>\n

The former PayPal CFO-turned-venture-capitalist celebrated as one of his largest investments, ticketing event platform Eventbrite, which went public in September 2018.<\/p>\n

That followed exits including MongoDB, which went public in October 2017, and Square, which has performed well on the market since its November 2015 IPO, with a market capitalisation of more than $30 billion as of March 2018.<\/p>\n

Square bought another of Botha’s companies, website builder Weebly, in January 2019 for $365 million.<\/p>\n

Taking an early risk on YouTube, Botha has continued to invest in startups with a ‘clear-eyed vision’ including personal genetic testing company 23andMe and bio company BridgeBio.<\/p>\n

Botha also spearheaded the launch of Sequoia AMP, a 10-week intensive for portfolio company founders to accelerate company growth.<\/p>\n

As a grad student at Stanford, Botha stumbled into the role of entrepreneur when he was running low on cash and decided to join PayPal.<\/p>\n

Botha became CFO at PayPal while earning his MBA at Stanford University. He negotiated PayPal\u2019s sale to eBay for $1.5 billion and then jumped ship to Sequoia Capital where his most notable deal is in credit card processing business, Square.<\/p>\n

Botha has said he ended up at PayPal in part by chance.<\/p>\n

He came to the US in 1998, right after an emerging markets currency crisis that caused him to lose 40% of his savings overnight.<\/p>\n

In need of a job, he joined the payments processing company and hasn’t looked back since.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: The story behind Michael Jordaan\u2019s decision to start Bank Zero<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forbes has released its annual Midas list for 2019, looking at the world\u2019s most successful venture capitalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":308772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[1896,26],"class_list":["post-308768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-forbes","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308768"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308792,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308768\/revisions\/308792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}