16 Investors that Every Entrepreneur Should Follow on Twitter

Follow these 12 west coast and 4 east coast investors on Twitter to keep a pulse on what’s happening on both coasts. Embarassingly, it’s almost all men! Please send me some suggestions of more female investors to follow!

If you’re in Austin and getting started with fundraising, come to the next Intro to Fundraising in Austin meetup at Capital Factory. It’s the first Tuesday of every month at at 4pm.

West Coast

Marc Andreessen was the founder of Netscape, on the board of Facebook, and his firm Andreessen-Horowitz (A16z for short) is one of Silicon Valley’s leading firms founded in the past decade. He tweets a lot and may have invented the “tweetstorm.”

Sam Altman was the founder of Loopt and is now CEO of Y Combinator. He’s wicked smart and outspoken and one of the most powerful seed investors in the world. Since taking over YC he’s made a lot of changes and most of them get announced on Twitter first.

Dave McClure was an early employee at Paypal and then started investing, which led to 500 Startups — one of the most global seed investment funds in the world. The man is constantly flying around the world visiting entrepreneurs and probably has the best perspective on global entrepreneurship. Sending him an email is a futile exercise but worth it for the funny autorpesponder — you’ll have a better chance of getting a reply if you send him a message on Twitter.

Startup L. Jackson is one of the funniest startup Twitter accounts you can follow — both because the account stays true to Samuel L. Jackson’s style of talking in Pulp Fiction and because he’s clearly an insightful, Silicon Valley insider whose jokes are all the more funny because they all ring with truth as well. His or her true identity is one of Twitter’s biggest secrets.

Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur turned angel investor turned, well… entrepreneur-angel-investor. In addition to founding Vast, which is based in here in Austin, he is the founder and CEO of AngelList — a powerful crowdfunding community that connects entrepreneurs with angel investors in Silicon Valley and all over the world. He doesn’t tweet a lot these days, but it’s worth paying attention to what he says.

Brad Feld is a Boulder venture capitalist, founder of Techstars, and author of numerous books including the definitive Venture Deals. Brad is one of the most well respected VC’s and bloggers and he’s usually talking about the issues that entrepreneurs need to know about. Most recently that’s been immigration, patent reform, and entrepreneur depression.

Paul Graham is the founder Y Combinator and one of the best and most prolific startup bloggers. While he’s no longer at the helm of YC, he’s still full of witty comments and insightful essays.

Mark Suster is the leading venture capitalist in the Los Angeles area which not surprisingly tends to focus on media and entertainment startups. I often quote his saying, “Invest in lines, not dots.” His firm recently led the Series A investment in Austin’s Waldo.photos.

Chris Sacca was an early Google employee and then later an early investor in Twitter, Instagram, Kickstarter and Uber. He’s known for wearing cowboy shirts and recently as a guest shark on Shark Tank. He’s also a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

Cyan Banister is an incredible force of nature and also one of the most active investors on AngelList (along with her husband Scott who is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met). I first met Cyan and Scott when they was at IronPort and then we’ve both invested in each other’s businesess and been friends ever since.

Mike Maples, Jr. is an Austin native who founded Motive and later moved out to Silicon Valley to become a venture capitalist. He was one of the first investors in Twitter and Chegg and is a brilliant startup strategist. He comes back to Austin every few months to visit his dad who reported to Bill Gates as President of Microsoft before retiring to his Texas ranch.

Christine Herron is one of the top female venture capitalists in the world. After founding her own startup, she landed a gig at First Round Capital and made investments in Get Satisfaction, Mint and Xobni. Now she’s at Intel Capital and frequently comes to Austin for SXSW.

East Coast

John Frankel is one of the leading early stage investors in New York City, with investments all over the world. He’s made multiple investments in Austin including Infochimps (sold to CA), Volunteerspot and Reaction Housing. He busts his ass for his startups.

Fred Wilson is one of the most well known venture capitalists on Twitter because he was an early investor and also is one of the most prolific VC bloggers at AVC.com. He’s always sharing thoughtful commentary on what’s happening with venture capital and startups and has an often contrary view to west coast investors. His firm Union Square Ventures had a big win recently in Austin when Indeed.com sold to Recruit for a billion dollars.

Steve Case is the founder of Aol and now a venture capitalist at Revolution. He’s an active investor and champion for startups outside Silicon Valley with his Rise of the Rest bus tour across the United States. Revolution has significant investments in Austin’s Sparefoot and BigCommerce.

Josh Kopelman is a serial entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and really pioneered the seed investing model that we see many other firms also doing today. He passed on investing in my last startup OtherInbox but still gave me critical advice that led to our eventual partnership with Yahoo and sale to Return Path. He’s invested in Austin’s Bazaarvoice and Civitas Learning.

If you get through all that, you probably want to follow me too.

Who else should be on the list? Leave a comment or message me on Twitter.