Cover Story

The world’s top 50 venture capital fundraisers continue to rack up commitments for new vehicles, pushing their piles of dry powder to new heights. Here, we present this year’s VCJ 50, our ranking of the industry’s biggest capital raisers over the past five years.

Large asset managers’ participation in venture capital deals is nothing new. But it has only grown in recent years, and non-traditional investors are now going downstream even more, participating in outsized seed deals. The competition that has emerged will likely impact VC for years to come.

The venture community’s use of ‘pattern matching’ past successes to find the next big opportunity has excluded many female- and diverse-owned start-ups from raising capital. But as climate-tech investing gains steam, these start-ups that are showing some of the greatest potential to innovate in lower-income communities.

GPs and LPs can see clearly now the rain is gone. The vaccine rollout is removing obstacles out of the way for face-to-face contact, and with the dark cloud of the pandemic slowly being lifted, the venture community is planning their return to the physical world for work, but they won’t entirely leave the virtual behind.

For the second year in a row, we reached out to readers and others in the venture capital community to find out who are the industry’s up and comers. It was a difficult task, but we crafted a list of 40 professionals under 40 who are certain to shape VC as the next generation of rising stars.

Venture Capital Journal unveils its debut ranking of the 50 largest venture fundraisers over the past five years.