Angels' returns are rarely public, so no public ranking of angels by returns exists. Lenny's Newsletter ranks activity, and its one ranking by exits is paywalled and not summarized here. Famous wins like Andy Bechtolsheim's $100,000 check to Google are single deals. Judge a track record by realized exits, sample size and method.
Claims of a "best track record" usually rest on numbers that are not public. Angels rarely publish what they invested, what they sold and what they lost. This page explains what the public record can and cannot show, names well-documented early bets with a source for each, and gives you the questions to ask when someone claims a great record.
Is there a public ranking of angel investors by returns?
The closest thing is Lenny's Newsletter's December 2024 study of top US angels, built with Crunchbase data. It asked three questions: who was most active over the past five years, who is most active now, and who has been most successful historically. Its answer to the third question, including a ranking titled "Angel investors with the most exits in the past six years", is behind the newsletter's paywall, so this page does not report it.
The newsletter is open about its limits. Many deals are never announced, not every investor is named in every deal, and well-known investors appear more often. Its author calls the figures directional, not exact.
Activity rankings reward volume. Lenny's ranks this site's author, Sahin Boydas, first for 2024 and tenth over five years by number of investments, and that tells you how many deals he did, not how they performed.
Which angel bets are best documented?
These are widely reported early bets, listed alphabetically by last name. Each is a statement about one deal or one self-reported list, not a calculation of returns.
Andy Bechtolsheim. Search Engine Watch recounted in 2010 that the Sun Microsystems founder gave Larry Page and Sergey Brin a personal check for $100,000, made out to Google Inc. before any such legal entity existed.
Scott Belsky. His bio says he was an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Ramp and Uber, among other companies.
Elad Gil. His own bio says he has backed about 40 unicorns, more than 30 of them at the pre-seed, seed or Series A stage. That count is self-reported, and it does not show entry prices or losses.
Peter Thiel. CNNMoney reported in 2012 that he became Facebook's first big investor in 2004 with $500,000.
Notice what each entry leaves out: the other investments that person made. A single famous check is a data point about the company, and it says little about the investor's hit rate.
What does the data say about typical angel returns?
Two studies by Rob Wiltbank are the most cited. The first, with Warren Boeker, covered 538 angel-group members, 3,097 investments and 1,137 exits and closures, and was released in November 2007 by the Angel Capital Education Foundation with Kauffman Foundation funding. Its summary slides report an overall multiple of 2.6x, an average holding period of 3.5 years and an average IRR of 27%. They also report that deals with high diligence time returned 5.9x against 1.1x for low diligence, with a median of 20 hours.
In a 2012 TechCrunch column, Wiltbank described a larger dataset of more than 1,200 exited investments with a 2.5x gross multiple and a mean holding period of about four years. He wrote that 90 percent of cash returns came from the top 10 percent of exits, that an angel is more likely than not to lose money on any single investment, and that median returns only exceeded 1x once an investor had at least six investments. He suggested a dozen or more.
Treat both with care. They cover angels who joined groups or responded to surveys, they are multiples of invested capital that do not net out taxes, fees or an angel's time, and they say nothing about which individual angels did better.
How should you judge an angel's track record?
The concentration of returns is the key to reading any record. If most cash comes from a few exits, a short record can look excellent through luck, and the luck versus skill analysis explains how to separate the two. Ask:
Are the gains realized? Exits and secondary sales are cash. Paper valuations are not.
How big is the sample? Count investments and years, not just wins.
Who led each deal? Following a lead investor is different from sourcing and pricing the round.
Was it their own money? Syndicates and SPVs add fees and carry that change what investors keep.
Will they discuss the misses? An investor who can describe three failures in detail has a record you can examine.
Can you speak to founders they backed, including ones whose companies struggled?
For your own record, the guide to building an angel portfolio from scratch covers sizing and pacing, the due diligence guide covers what to check before a deal, and angel investing versus stock market returns puts the asset class in context. More guides are in the angel investing section.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q:Who is the most successful angel investor of all time?
No source supports a single answer, because individual angels' returns are rarely public. The documented examples above are famous early checks, which show where money went and when, not what each investor kept.
Q:What is the average return for angel investors?
The 2007 angel-group study reported an overall 2.6x multiple and a 27% average IRR. Wiltbank's 2012 column reported 2.5x gross across more than 1,200 exits. Both are multiples of invested capital, not net of fees and taxes, and both draw on investors who joined groups or answered surveys.
Q:How many angel investments lose money?
Wiltbank wrote that an angel is more likely than not to lose money on any single investment. The same data show a handful of exits supplying most of the cash, which is why portfolio size matters.
Q:How many investments does an angel need?
In his 2012 column, Wiltbank found median returns above 1x once an investor had at least six investments and suggested a dozen or more. Your own number depends on check size and how many deals you can follow.