The Top Investors in MBA Startups

Need cash for your startup? You could do worse than to start with this list of the major backers of the 100 most successful MBA startups of the past five years.

Many of the world’s leading venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley and in San Francisco have helped to finance MBA entrepreneurs from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and MIT, among other schools. In fact, 19 of the top 26 investors of business school startups are based in California.

At the top of the list is SV Angel, the San Francisco-based firm run by legendary angel investors Ron Conway and David Lee, who back more than 100 startups a year. SV Angel has put money into a dozen of our top 100 MBA-founded companies.

Several of the players, such as Lerer Ventures in New York, specialize in seed stage investing, funding founders who are in the earliest stages of startup life.

And then there are the celebrity investors in MBA startups who include such well-known players as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, veteran tech analyst Esther Dyson, and J. Crew Group chief Mickey Drexler.