Hot new startups Silicon Valley
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The SV Angel team, with Topher Conway on the far left and his dad in the center next to Snoop Dog
When you're a venture capitalist investing in startups, it takes about seven years to know if you're doing a good job or not. That's how long it generally takes for a startup to exit and for you to know if you made a great investment or put money into a major flop.There are a bunch of 20-somethings in Silicon Valley who are helping source deals for their firms. They're taking board seats and being handed millions of dollars to find the best new companies around.
A few 20-somethings have left traditional firms and raised tens of millions of dollars for their own funds.
We rounded up a list of people who have already accomplished a lot in the Silicon Valley startup scene. If they keep at it, they could become the next Ron Conways, Fred Wilsons, and Bill Gurleys. Who'd we miss? Leave names in the comments.
Kanyi Maqubela
Age: 28
Title: Venture Partner, Collaborative Fund
Deals led and more info: Maqubela has recently worked on the following deals for Collaborative: Assembly, InVenture, Earnest, Walker & Company, Guild and Upstart
Richard Kerby
Richard Kirby
Richard Kerby
Age: 27
Title: Senior Associate, Venrock
Deals led and more info: Board Observer at BetterFinance, Burner, and 6Sense and worked on investments in Nest, Zenefits, and Trumaker. At IVP where Kerby previously worked, he aided investments in Dropbox, Shazam, PopSugar, Yext, Buddy Media, AddThis, Fleetmatics and Klout.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Nikhil Triveti
Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Age: 25
Title: Associate, Shasta Ventures
Deals led and more info: Basu Trivedi co-sponsored investments in ClassDojo, Doctor on Demand, Jack Erwin, Swipely, and three that are not yet formally announced.
Kristina Shen
Kristina Shen
Age: 27
Title: VC at Bessemer Venture Partners
Deals led and more info: Shen worked on investments including Adaptive Planning (SaaS corporate performance management), DoubleDutch (mobile event marketing), Instructure (SaaS learning management system), and Twilio. She also serves as a board observer for DoubleDutch and Retail Solutions, and she's the co-founder of a startup in stealth mode.
Kevin Carter
SV Angel
Kevin Carter
Title: Partner at SV Angel
Deals led and more info: Carter has been with SV Angel since 2009. He was included in Forbes Magazine's 30 under 30 in 2012 and 2013. Kevin originated SV Angel's investment in Snapchat and works closely with FrontBack, FlightCar and Optimizely. He is also on the Engineering Industry Advisory Board at Santa Clara University. Prior to SV Angel, he worked in the Private Equity Group at Silicon Valley Bank.
Mike Rothenberg
Mike Rothenberg
Age: 30
Title: Founder, Rothenberg Ventures
Deals led and more info: Rothenberg Ventures is currently leading the Series A for a TechStars company, and the seed round for Qualia3D (social platform for virtual reality). His firm also has large seed investments in SOLS (3D-printed orthotics), Augmate (Digital eyewear software for the deskless worker), Buttercoin (Bitcoin exchange), and Reaction (revolutionizing shelter).
Sam Altman
Wikimedia, CC
Sam Altman
Age: 29
Title: President, Y Combinator
Deals led and more info: Altman runs this prestigious startup accelerator program, a role he recently took over from Paul Graham. Altman helps pick out and invest in 50-80 startups per YC batch. Prior to becoming an investor, Altman was an entrepreneur who went through YC's 2005 program with his startup, Loopt.
Blake Byers
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Q&A
Why does Silicon Valley think that Hipmunk is a hot startup?
First, we have JetBlue. Nobody has Southwest, but that's not to say no one will down the road.
In addition to having a really nice UI, we've brought a lot of original thought to the problem: the agony sort for flights, flight domination (which removes 75% of listings), ecstasy sort for hotels, etc. We have a product people *love* in a huge market, incompetent competitors, and a highly effective team.
