A highly data-driven list, Midas is produced from a combination of public data sources and the submissions of thousands of investment deals from hundreds of investors each year.
The startup tech sector is a dynamic engine driving much of today’s market – and venture capital is its primary fuel. Launched in 2001 and refined over the ensuing years, the Midas List seeks to recognize those venture investors who have backed the best-performing companies that will be the household names of tomorrow. The list calls out the best VCs from across the globe in what we believe is the most data-driven list of its kind. Forbes and its data partner TrueBridge seek to recognize those investors who have earned the best returns for their limited partners when their companies have gone public, had an M&A transaction, or raised rounds of financing at an increased valuation.
Midas List Methodology
TrueBridge Capital Partners
The list is created from a combination of public data sources and the submissions of thousands of investment deals from hundreds of investment partners each year. This results in a huge number of data points to be analyzed. The Midas team spends months compiling, verifying and evaluating the data to create a comprehensive picture of the venture partners behind the deals and their portfolios.
The Midas process kicks off in January, when venture firms are invited to confidentially submit their data. The Forbes and TrueBridge teams perform significant outreach to identify additional investors that would be good candidates for the list and encourage them to submit. While many investors repeat on the Midas List every year, we are always looking for new Midas-worthy investors and work to increase the number of submissions we receive, especially from new firms, female partners, people of color and VCs in emerging sectors and geographies.
Investors are considered based on their deals that have gone public or been acquired for at least $200 million over the last five years or that are private and valued at $400 million or more, also over the last five years. For the Midas Seed list, companies are eligible if they have exited at $50+ million or have a private, unexited value of $100 million or more, again within the last five years.
The five-year lookback period helps quantify the success of a VC by rewarding recent bets. So, a recently public company with a very successful offering could help propel an investor onto the list, but that investment is eligible for consideration for only five years after the IPO – and at a decreased rate each year during that five-year period. After the fifth year, it falls out of consideration and allows for newer investments to make an impact on the list.
This year’s list certainly saw the effects of that five-year window. In a market where IPO numbers have been down, investors had companies age out with few to no recent exits to supplant them. Since last year’s Midas List, Spotify, Mulesoft and Adyen all aged out. More significantly, a number of impactful Asian companies aged out including Ant Group, Meituan, Pinduoduo, Tencent Music and Xiaomi. This, combined with the rising valuations of private companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX, resulted in significant movement up and down the list for many VCs.
In addition to valuations, the confidential data submissions include information such as when a firm first invested in a company, the level of involvement an investor had in that company and to what extent the investment has been realized.
The Midas team pulls data that is publicly available on financing rounds, public offerings and M&A transactions. This data is used to validate firms’ submissions as well as to supplement it, ultimately cross-referencing and matching firm data against a host of available information: other submissions, Midas data from prior years, public data and the insight of experts on the deals and market. This broad and deep data set ultimately helps us determine which VCs are seeing the strongest performance and returns for their investors, setting the Midas List each year.
To be considered for the list, VCs must invest on behalf of third-party limited partners – investors backing companies from personal balance sheets or for a single corporation don’t qualify as they often have different objectives driving their investment strategy.
We believe using quantitative factors that have been verified across multiple data sets results in the Midas List being the most data-driven ranking of its kind. Venture capital has a significant impact on global innovation, and we hope that our analysis and Forbes’ reporting provides some insight into the venture industry, its inner workings, and the VCs that are funding the most impactful companies of tomorrow.
Additional details on the Midas model and the quantitative factors that influence the list can be found at the submission site: www.submitmidasdata.com. If you’re interested in being notified when submissions open each year, please email midas@truebridgecapital.com.
