No.5

Markham Johnson

No.5

Peter Thiel, 42
Founder, President, Clarium Capital Management

No. of Angel Investments: 26
Companies funded (a sampling): Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga

If you subscribe to the notion of a PayPay mafia—the handful of entrepreneurs who came out of the online payment firm to help start and fund the Web 2.0 movement—then PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is the logical godfather of the group. Thiel appears set up to stay among the top-ranked angels, thanks to his early investments in Facebook, Zynga, and LinkedIn—three of the most highly anticipated IPOs, with equally high valuations. (Thiel is an angel investor in YouNoodle, the research company that provided the angel investor ranking.) "Read a Q&A" with Thiel as he shares some thoughts about angel investing, Google’s angels, and his track record.