Angel investors breathe life into companies by providing them with funding, mentorship, and sometimes even new founders. Several of the best known names from the last decade have since moved from personal angel checks into running venture firms, stepped back from investing, or changed roles, so it pays to know who is actually still active before you pitch. The last thing you want is to chase an investor who no longer does what the internet says they do.
To help you narrow down your options, we're going to take you through 8 well known angel investors, what they actually invest in today, and where their firms stand right now. Read on to learn more below.
8 Well Known Angel Investors (And Where They Stand Today)
Angel investors don't always offer as much funding as venture capital firms, but that doesn't mean they're not viable options for early stage start-ups. Several names on this list, like Paul Graham, made their reputation as some of the earliest and most prolific individual checks in Silicon Valley history, even though most now invest primarily through firms rather than as solo angels.
We're going to take you through some of the best known angel investors below, including a few, like Jeff Clavier and Keith Rabois, whose firms account for most of their check writing today. If you're looking for individual angel investors actively writing personal checks right now, AngelMatch's database is a faster way to find them than any single list.
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Jeff Clavier
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Dave Morin
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Jeff Bezos
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Keith Rabois
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Ron Conway
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David Lee
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Paul Graham
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Chris Sacca
1. Jeff Clavier
Jeff Clavier is a prolific early stage investor who founded SoftTech VC in 2004. The firm rebranded to Uncork Capital in 2014 and remains one of the most established seed firms in Silicon Valley, having closed 200+ investments since its founding.
Clavier got his start writing personal angel checks in Web 2.0 companies before institutionalizing that activity into SoftTech VC's first fund. He's still widely referred to as one of the original "super angels" of that era, and Uncork continues to lead seed rounds today, investing out of its Fund VI.
Uncork Capital's portfolio includes companies like Fitbit, SendGrid, Eventbrite, Postmates, and Poshmark, all of which went public or were acquired. Current investments include ClassDojo, DroneDeploy, Shippo, and Front.
Clavier still writes personal angel checks alongside Uncork's fund investments, but exact amounts vary by deal, so reach out directly for current terms rather than relying on a fixed range.
2. Dave Morin
Dave Morin is a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and angel investor. He co-founded Path, a mobile social network, in 2010. Path was acquired by Kakao in 2015 and shut down in 2018, so it's now a past company on his résumé rather than a going concern.
Today, Morin is best known as founder of Slow Ventures and co-founder of Offline Ventures. He remains an active angel investor outside of e-commerce and tech alone, with a portfolio that has included Robinhood, Amplitude, and Front.
Morin is not afraid of investing in industries outside the usual tech categories either, having also backed companies in consumer, agriculture, and entertainment over the years. That said, he remains one of the more open minded angel investors on this list.
Check sizes vary by deal and by whether he's investing personally or through Slow Ventures or Offline Ventures, so there's no single fixed range to quote.
3. Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the world. Bezos founded Amazon, which became one of the largest technology companies in the United States. He stepped down as Amazon's CEO in 2021 to become Executive Chairman, freeing up more time for Blue Origin and other investments.
Bezos invests through Bezos Expeditions, his personal investment vehicle, and remains an active investor today. As of mid-2026, he has invested in more than 30 companies through the vehicle, spanning AI, biotech, fintech, and space.
Most of Bezos's angel checks are small relative to his net worth, but he has also made larger investments in companies like Domo and Everfi. The Washington Post, often mentioned alongside his investment activity, is a separate personal acquisition rather than an angel investment.
4. Keith Rabois
Keith Rabois is a Managing Director at Khosla Ventures , which he rejoined in January 2024 after five years as a General Partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.
Rabois is widely regarded as one of the top early stage investors around, having led Khosla's first institutional investments in DoorDash and Affirm and invested early in Stripe. He's a member of the so called "PayPal Mafia," having been an early PayPal executive alongside Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
Rabois isn't picky about what he invests in either. As long as the idea is sound, he's backed companies across fintech, consumer, real estate, and seed stage deals more broadly, including early personal bets on YouTube, Airbnb, and Lyft.
5. Ron Conway
Ron Conway made his name through some of the best early investments in tech history. When companies like Google and PayPal were in their early stages, Conway invested and reaped the rewards. He's been an active angel investor since the mid-1990s.
Conway is the founder and a managing partner of SV Angel, and has been recognized on Forbes' Midas list of top dealmakers since 2011. In April 2026, Conway announced he had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and is stepping back from day to day activities to focus on treatment. He said SV Angel's operations remain unchanged, since his son Topher Conway has made most of the firm's investment decisions for close to a decade, and his other son Ronny Conway joined as a managing partner in 2024. For founders reaching out today, Topher and Ronny are the more likely points of contact.
SV Angel's portfolio has included companies like Airbnb and Pinterest, and the firm's current focus, per its team, is founders building in artificial intelligence.
6. David Lee
David Lee was a founding partner of SV Angel alongside Ron Conway, where he helped make early investments in companies like Twitter, Dropbox, and Airbnb. He left SV Angel in the early 2010s.
After SV Angel, Lee co-founded Refactor Capital, a seed stage venture fund focused on health and biology. He currently serves as Head of Samsung NEXT and an Executive Vice President at Samsung Electronics, where he oversees the company's venture and startup investment activities.
Lee is still an active angel investor on the side, with recent personal investments including HeyMax and Story Protocol, but he's no longer the SV Angel contact founders may be expecting from older lists.
7. Paul Graham
Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator, the accelerator that pioneered the modern seed accelerator model. Graham stepped down as YC's president in 2014, handing the role to Sam Altman, and today is primarily known as an essayist and advisor rather than an active operating partner.
Unlike other angel investors, Graham has direct founder experience with the ideas he's backed. In 1995, he co-founded Viaweb, which became Yahoo! Store after Yahoo acquired it in 1998 for roughly $49 million in stock, Graham's largest exit.
Graham is also known for his 2002 essay "A Plan for Spam," which helped popularize Bayesian filtering for junk email. Through YC, he's backed thousands of startups including Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, and Reddit, though he's not writing many individual angel checks outside of YC today.
8. Chris Sacca
Chris Sacca made his name as founder and chairman of Lowercase Capital, an early stage fund known for backing Twitter, Uber, and Instagram. In April 2017, Sacca announced he was stepping back from active venture investing, including his role on Shark Tank.
Sacca has largely shifted his attention to Lowercarbon Capital, the climate focused firm he and his wife, Crystal English Sacca, launched in 2021. Lowercarbon backs climate tech rather than the broad consumer and tech bets Lowercase was known for.
If you're pitching a general consumer or software startup, Sacca is a much less active angel today than older lists suggest. If you're building in climate, Lowercarbon is the more relevant door to knock on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the investors on lists like this still actively writing angel checks?
Not always. Several well known names from the 2010s have since moved into full time venture capital roles, corporate venture arms, or have stepped back from investing altogether. Before pitching anyone from a "best angel investors" list, confirm their current firm and role, since bios like these change often.
What's the difference between an angel investor and a VC firm partner?
An angel investor typically writes checks with their own personal money, often at the earliest stages. A VC firm partner invests capital raised from limited partners through a structured fund. Many well known "angel investors," including several on this list, do both: personal angel checks alongside institutional fund investments.
How much do individual angel investors typically invest in a first check?
Angel check sizes vary widely by investor, industry, and round, typically ranging from the tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand dollars. There's no single standard figure, so it's worth confirming an investor's typical check size directly rather than relying on a published range.
How do I find angel investors like these for my own startup?
Rather than cold emailing famous names, most founders have better luck searching for angel investors who focus on their specific stage, industry, and location. AngelMatch's investor database lets you filter by all three to find individuals actually likely to respond.
Connect with Investors Today!
The best angel investors are investors who you can actually connect with. It's not always possible to reach high profile angel investors, especially once they've moved into full time VC roles, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try the right ones for your stage.
Our objective at AngelMatch is to connect you with investors that fit your needs and goals. Our database of 125,000+ investors includes over 82,000 individual angels who will help you expand your start-up and take you to the next level.
Access our investor database to find the right fit including list of famous names we covered.
