Ron Conway is an American angel investor

Angel investor

An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...

, often described as one of the "super angel

Super angel

Super angel investor is a term sometimes used to describe a group of serial investors in early stage ventures who are perceived to be particularly sophisticated, insightful, or well-connected in the startup business community, particularly with respect to technology companies in Silicon Valley,...

s". Conway is recognized as a strong networker and is based in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

.

Early career

A former salesman who had made a fortune in the computer business, Conway knew little about technology on his first entry to the business. Ron Conway graduated from San Jose State University

San José State University

San Jose State University is a public university located in San Jose, California, United States...

 with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

.

Conway previously worked with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions (1973–1979), Altos Computer Systems

Altos Computer Systems

Altos Computer Systems was founded in 1977 by David G. Jackson.It was acquired by Acer in 1990.- External links :*...

, as a co-founder, President and CEO, (1979–1990) and Personal Training Systems (PTS) as CEO (1991–1995). PTS was acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft.

Investing

As founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds, he was an early stage investor

Investor

An investor is a party that makes an investment into one or more categories of assets --- equity, debt securities, real estate, currency, commodity, derivatives such as put and call options, etc...

 in Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, Ask Jeeves and PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

. He began investing independently in 2005, and by 2006 had already achieved sixth place in the Forbes Magazine Midas list of top "dealmakers".

Dot Com era

Conway's first fund, Angel Investors I, raised and invested in 1998, generated a 7 times return, and his second, raised and invested during 1999, saw a 1.5 times return.

Some Valley observers, notably VentureBeat, have been critical of Ron Conway for his investments during the Internet boom, believing them to be "symbolic of the era’s hubris." Conway developed a reputation for throwing lavish cocktail parties and raising cash from a diverse group of celebrities, sportspeople, and political figures such as Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...

, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....

, Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Formerly the World No...

, and Shaquille O'Neal

Shaquille O'Neal

Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal , nicknamed "Shaq" , is a former American professional basketball player. Standing tall and weighing , he was one of the heaviest players ever to play in the NBA...

, which he then ploughed into start-ups

Startup company

A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...

.

Conway was embroiled in a conflict with other angel investors in the Angelgate

Angelgate

Angelgate is a controversy surrounding allegations of price fixing and collusion among a group of ten angel investors in the San Francisco Bay Area.-The issue:...

 scandal of 2010, and in 2011 another controversy erupted around rumors of conflicts he had with entrepreneurs.

List of investments

Conway secured funds for, among ventures, a web site to supply veterinary medical supplies, a weight-loss site, a maternity site and an e-commerce company featuring a search engine

Search engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

 that aimed to predict the buyer's mood.

Among Conway's 500 or more investments are:

• AppNexus
• Ask Jeeves
• Aster Data Systems
  Aster Data Systems
  Aster Data Systems is a data management and analysis software company headquartered in San Carlos, California. It was founded in 2005 and acquired in 2011.-Products:...
  
  
• Attributor
  Attributor
  Attributor is a provider of digital content protection for the publishing industry. Its products enable publishers to identify and verify copy infringement, enforce authorized use, analyze market demand and monetize digital content.- Features :...
  
  
• Blip Networks
• Blippy
  Blippy
  Blippy is a social media sharing site operated from Palo Alto, California by a company of the same name, for users to post and follow each other's updates about their purchases of goods and services. It has been described as the "Twitter of personal finance", and is often compared with Twitter...
  
  
• Bring Light
  Bring Light
  Bring Light, Inc. is an American company that runs an online web service which helps charities reach new donors and raise funds. It is also a social network for donors to find charitable projects to support and to help those donors make a bigger difference by getting others involved.-Origins:Bring...
  
  
• BuzzFeed
  BuzzFeed
  BuzzFeed is a website that combines a technology platform for detecting viral content with an editorial selection process to provide a snapshot of "the viral web in realtime." Cofounded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti , BuzzFeed is located in SoHo, New York.-Homepage content:The BuzzFeed homepage consists...
  
  
• BuzzLogic
• CastTV
  CastTV
  CastTV is an Internet video search and aggregation company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 2006 by Edwin Ong and Alex Vikati...
  
  
• Clearspring
  Clearspring
  Clearspring Technologies is a web technology company based in McLean, Virginia, USA. Clearspring's AddThis sharing platform reaches 1.2B unique visitors monthly and is used by over 10MM web publishers to virally distribute and track content across blogs, social networks and other web sites...
  
  
• decentral.tv
• Digg
  Digg
  Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
  
  
• Fashism
• Fluther.com
• Foursquare
• Fraudwall
• Kaboodle
  Kaboodle
  Kaboodle is a spelling derivation of the English word "caboodle", meaning a group, bunch, lot, pack, or collection of things or people. Caboodle is further derived from Boodle or booty...
  
  
• Google
  Google
  Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
  
  
• Hot Potato
• Knewton
  Knewton
  Knewton is an adaptive learning company that has developed a platform to personalize educational content. The Knewton platform allows schools, publishers, and developers to provide adaptive learning for any student. Knewton recently announced a partnership with Pearson Education to power the...
  
  
• MerchantCircle
  MerchantCircle
  MerchantCircle is a Mountain View, California-based start-up company which helps small businesses network with other local businesses and reach local customers through free marketing tools and social media features. Former CEO Ben T. Smith, IV co-founded the company in 2005...
  
  
• Mint.com
  Mint.com
  Mint.com is a free web-based personal financial management service for the US and Canada created by entrepreneur Aaron Patzer. Mint originally provided account aggregation through a deal with Yodlee, but has since moved to using Intuit for connecting to accounts...
  
  
• Napster
  Napster
  Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
  
  
• PayPal
  PayPal
  PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
  
  
• PBwiki
  PBwiki
  PBworks is a commercial real-time collaborative editing system created by David Weekly, with Ramit Sethi and Nathan Schmidt joining shortly thereafter as co-founders. Based in San Mateo, California, the company's original name stems from their belief that "making a wiki is as easy as making a...
  
  
• Perenety
• Rupture
• ScanScout
• Seesmic
  Seesmic
  Seesmic is a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allow users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter....
  
  
• SteelHouse
• Square
  Square (payment service)
  Square is an electronic payment service, and the name of the card-reading device it uses. Square allows users in the United States to accept credit cards through their mobile phones, either by swiping the card on the Square device or by manually entering the details on the phone.-Creation:The...
  
  
• Swipely
  Swipely
  Swipely is an online service and social network where members can share purchases with friends. Users post and recommend purchases, see where their friends are spending and what their friends are buying...
  
  
• TellApart
• Twitter
  Twitter
  Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
  
  
• vSocial
• Vook
• Vizu
• Weebly
  Weebly
  Weebly is an online, free widget-based Web site creator, funded by micro-seed fund Y Combinator. It uses a widget-style format, allowing users to create pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements onto a page and filling in the content...
  
  
• WePay
  WePay
  WePay is an online payment platform for individuals, groups, and organizations in the United States. The platform allows people to sell tickets, send invoices, sell items, and accept donations online...
  
  
• ZocDoc
  ZocDoc
  ZocDoc is an online medical appointment booking service. ZocDoc users search for doctors, dentists, and other health care providers by insurance type and location...
  
  
• Zooomr
  Zooomr
  - History :Zooomr was created in 2005 by Kristopher Tate and Michael Van Veen of BlueBridge Technologies Group. On June 19, 2006, Thomas Hawk, a well-known photographer and blogger from San Francisco, was recruited by Zooomr as its so called "Chief Evangelist." On July 17, 2006, Zooomr released...
  
  

Philanthropy

Conway is active in community and philanthropic activities, serving as Vice Chairman of UCSF Medical Foundation in San Francisco and also as co-chair of the “Fight for Mike” Homer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease or CJD is a degenerative neurological disorder that is incurable and invariably fatal. CJD is at times called a human form of mad cow disease, given that bovine spongiform encephalopathy is believed to be the cause of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans.CJD...

 (CJD). He is on the development committees of UCLA, St. Francis High School, Sacred Heart Schools, The UCSF Medical Center

UCSF Medical Center

The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center is a world renowned hospital in research and a teaching hospital in San Francisco, California. It is one of the leading hospitals in the United States and with the UCSF School of Medicine has been the site of various breakthroughs in all...

 in San Francisco, Packard Children's Hospital, Legacy Ventures, and Ronald McDonald House at Stanford.

He is also on the Benefit Committee of the Tiger Woods Foundation.

External links

• Video and podcast of Ron Conway speaking at Stanford