The Midas List, Or Why Facebook May Be The New Google
With hundreds of prominent venture capitalist gathered at the NVCA conference in Boston today, it was an interesting time for Forbes to release its sometimes-annual Midas list of 2011’s top 100 tech investors. We imagine some VCs gave their touch-screens a good workout as they scrolled through the list to see where they ranked – or if they ranked at all.
Such lists are always heavily subjective, since picking the methodology determines how the list will turn out (full disclosure: our friends at Dow Jones VentureSource provided the raw data for the Forbes report, though neither VC Dispatch nor VentureWire was involved in the project). And indeed, some VCs get irritated by the list, believing it doesn’t accurately reflect true returns.
But it certainly gets attention. The project examines returns gained from IPOs and M&As over $200 million in the last five years, and used a series of additional metrics as well as an expert panel to come up with the final list.