At last week’s 9th Founder Showcase, we celebrated the best investors of 2011 with TheFunded.com’s Entrepreneur Investor Awards.
Anthony Ha of TechCrunch covered the awards here (including a video of the ceremony).
Here are the winners of the 2011 Awards;
Most Disruptive Investor
Ben Horowitz, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Ben is the Co-Founder and General Partner, along with Mark Andreessen, at Andreessen Horowitz based in Menlo Park. Andreessen Horowitz modeled their fund off of the modern talent agencies to provide a big network of value to their portfolio companies, reinventing the venture capital firm.
Best Investor in the Americas
George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures
Zachary focuses on building services and software technology companies, and he’s led CRV’s investments in Twitter, Yammer, Millennial Media, Cloudshare, Geni, SocialMedia, Metaplace, and Scribd (co-led with Bill Tai). CRV has pioneered the seed-stage investing model that has been copied by most venture firms worldwide, and they continue to be one of the most prolific seed stage investors, evolving the seed-stage venture model.
Best Investor in Europe, Middle East and Africa
Philippe Herbert, Partner, Banexi Venture Partners
Prior to joining Banexi Ventures Partners, Philippe was co-Managing Director of Partech International in charge of the investments in IT. His main investments were JobPartners, I-Progress, Mediapps, and DCT – all of which were acquired. Banexi Venture Partners is an active early-stage investor in the French startup ecosystem, supporting incubators and other new models to grow the success of European startups.
Best Investor in Asia
Yuri Milner, Founder and CEO of Mail.ru Group
Yuri founded Digital Sky Technologies (now Mail.ru Group) to focus on Internet investments in the Russian speaking world. Under his leadership, they performed approximately 75 transactions. In 2009, Yuri launched DST Global and invested in Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon. Mail.ru is renown for creating the “DST round,” where top tech companies secure hundreds of millions of dollars at multi-billion dollar valuations, changing the entire late-stage investment market.
Best New Fund Manager
Dave McClure, Founding Partner at 500 Startups
Dave McClure is the Founding Partner at 500 Startups, an internet startup seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, CA. 500 Startups has done over 250 investments in less than two years since launching with deals being done all over the world, making 500 Startups the most prolific early-stage investor operating today.
Other finalists included;
- Brad Feld (Managing Director at the Foundry Group)
- Bryan Schreier (Partner at Sequoia Capital)
- Chris Dixon (Founding Partner at the Founder Collective)
- David Skok (General Partner at Matrix Partners)
- David Sze (Partner at Greylock Partners)
- James D. Robinson IV (General Partner at RRE Ventures)
- Jeremy Liew (Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners)
- John Backus (Managing Partner at New Atlantic Ventures)
- John Doerr (Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)
- Jon Callaghan (Founder and Managing Partner at True Ventures)
- Joshua Kopelman (Managing Partner at First Round Capital)
- Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz)
- Maria Cirino (Co-Founder and Managing Director at 406 Ventures)
- Mark Suster (General Partner at GRP Partners)
- Mathew McCall (Partner at DFJ Portage Ventures)
- Mike Maples Jr. (Managing Partner at FLOODGATE)
- Roelof Botha (Partner at Sequoia Capital)
- Ron Conway (General Partner at SV Angel)
- Shlomo Dovrat (General Partner at Carmel Ventures)
- Steven Arnold (Co-Founder and Venture Partner at Polaris Ventures)
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who attended!