Forbes has published the annual “Midas List”, a ranking of the most successful venture investors in Europe, as well as a list of startups on which brave financiers made a fortune. We tell you who invested profitably and what received from this.

Top investors

• In the first place in the ranking is a businessman of Czech origin living in London, Jan Hammer. Investments in fintech helped him become a leader: a startup with Russian roots Robinhood, which reached a valuation of $ 7 billion, as well as startups Collibra and TransferWise, each of which this year won $ 100 million in investments.
• Next is the British investor Sonali de Riker, who invested in the Swedish music giant Spotify (capitalization of $ 25 billion). Riker, who worked at Goldman Sachs, was one of the first investors in the Russian Avito, and recently invested in the British fintech startup Soldo, which raised more than $ 82 million. The startup offers work through a multi-user bank account – that is, a businessman can issue bank cards to employees, completely controlling their expenses.
• In third place is San Francisco-based Swiss Danny Rimmer, who this year invested in cosmetics start-up Glossier (he has already become a “unicorn”), in a program for Figma design (attracted $40 million) and the donation service for creative projects Patreon ( received $ 60 million). To the success of the investor, the publication includes the IPO of the Dropbox file hosting service and Farfetch online retailer last year.
• The top 5 also included Swede Per-Jorgen Persona, who raised $ 500 million for Northzone IX (a fund for investing in European startups), as well as German Klaus Gommels, one of the first to invest in King.com, Skype and Spotify.

Top startups

The set of projects that have become “gold” in the hands of investors from the Midas list demonstrates both the development of the global venture capital environment and the desire of startups to improve the daily lives of consumers – preferably in new areas, Forbes writes.  

• The list of the most interesting companies for European investors is the Spotify music streaming service, launched in Sweden in 2008. Spotify continues to outperform competitors such as Apple Music in the number of subscribers: a record of 113 million was set in September. Spotify shifts focus to podcasts and original content, planning to spend up to $ 500 million.
• In second place is fin-tech startup Stripe, which continues to compete with Square, PayPal and Visa. According to Forbes, “Stripe successfully focuses on digital commerce, providing powerful and flexible online payment processing services for online businesses.” At the beginning of 2019, Stripe raised $ 100 million, and in September – another $ 250 million, as a result of which its valuation reached $ 35 billion. In fourth place is also Adyen fintech startup.
• In addition to the fintech, this year’s top startups include the CrowdStrike cloud cybersecurity project (valued at $ 7 billion), online luxury clothing retailer Farfetch (with a record 2 million customers), and Delivery Hero food delivery service (1 million orders per day, and a total estimate more than $ 5 billion). 
• Compass was also included in the top 10 startups, which reached an estimate of $ 6.4 billion due to the fact that it reduces the gap between the realtor and the consumer by directly offering digital services for individual selection of housing.