Top Early-Stage Investors, According to Tribe Capital

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Welcome to this weekly roundup of stories from Insider’s Business co-Editor in Chief Matt Turner. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.

What we’re going over today:

seed 100 thumb 2x1 — Left to right: Alfred Lin, Kaitlyn Doyle, Michael Seibel, Kirsten Green, Sheel Mohnot, and Ruchi Sanghvi.

Here’s what’s trending this morning:

From Margaux MacColl, Melia Russell, Candy Cheng, and Michael Haley:

The venture capitalists who write the earliest checks — known as seed investors — take the biggest risks. But when they choose well, they also reap the biggest rewards. With huge profits at stake, thousands of institutions and individuals are active seed investors.

But seed investing is more an art than a science and only a few succeed regularly. Tribe Capital, a seed venture-capital firm and an investor in other funds, set out to find the top investors by analyzing data on about 1,000 of them. The result is this list of the top 100 as well as the Seed 25, a list of the top female seed investors.

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From Warren Rojas, Adam Wren, Robin Bravender, Dave Levinthal, Camila DeChalus, Darren Samuelsohn, and Tom LoBianco:

Matt Gaetz was looking for a scandal.

It was March 25, and the Florida congressman responded to a tweet from the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who had asked no one in particular, “If there’s ever a scandal about me, *please* call it Elongate.”

“I want Gaetzgate,” the Florida Republican tweeted.

On Tuesday, Gaetz got exactly that as reports surfaced that the 38-year-old congressman was a subject of a sex-trafficking investigation.

Not long after the news broke, “Gaetzgate” was trending on Twitter. And former Trump White House and GOP officials who loathe the loquacious Gaetz were gloating.

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Nike Beijing — Customers lined up outside the Nike flagship store on the opening day at Wangfujing Street on January 20, 2021 in Beijing, China.

From Shoshy Ciment:

In January 2020, just days before the coronavirus pandemic would engulf the world, John Donahoe took the helm at Nike.

The former eBay and ServiceNow CEO had a bold mission to transform Nike from a marketing-first company into a technology juggernaut. Instead of selling shoes primarily in stores, Nike would up its innovation in a push to sell more products online and on smartphones.

Early signs point to success: In its latest quarterly earnings report, Nike said it grew online sales by 59%.

But some worry that transforming Nike from a marketing company into a technology brand is too ambitious.

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From Allison DeAngelis:

In January, at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of some of the globe’s richest and most powerful leaders, Andrea Pfeifer was promoting her biotech company and a new global initiative to treat Alzheimer’s.

During a Q&A session, George Vradenburg, the entertainment lawyer turned philanthropist, asked her a question about her work: “Is Alzheimer’s not one disease?”

“It’s definitely not one disease,” she replied.

The once controversial idea that Alzheimer’s is in fact a highly varied disease, if not multiple distinct but related conditions, is gaining traction and could unlock new approaches to treating it.

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From Sam Stokes and Jack Newsham:

From M&A deals to IPOs to bankruptcy proceedings, Big Law associates are busier than ever.

For some, their jobs advising financial firms and corporations just got a lot more lucrative. At least 25 Big Law firms are awarding special bonuses up to $64,000 to high-performing associates in 2021.

Recruiters and other industry experts say the payouts are an effort to keep burned-out associates from leaving after a grueling year of high-volume remote work. And some associates Insider spoke to said that, while the money is nice, what they’d really like is to see the workload lighten.