Haute 100 San Francisco Update: Ron Conway

Our Haute 100 list details the accomplishments of the most influential people in each of our markets—Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. These people continue to make moves, so rather than waiting for the next Haute 100 issue to come out, we thought we’d provide you with regular updates on those Haute 100 members who are making headlines. Silicon Valley super-angel investor Ron Conway is ever prominent in the Bay Area backing several new social networking start-ups.

Ron Conway

Category: Entrepreneurs

Company: SV Angels

Industry: Venture Capitalism

What Made Him Haute: This prolific angel investor who took an early interest in Google has put his faith and his funds in more than 500 companies over the years. Some of the big name businesses that have counted Conway as a guardian angel include Ask Jeeves and PayPal, along with some of his more current charges like Digg, Facebook, Twitter, and Associated Content Inc. No wonder the world knows him as the “Godfather of Silicon Valley.”

What Makes Him Haute Now: Hailing from Google glory, since being one of the first investors in the leading search engine, Ron Conway has had his finger on the pulse of just about every major start up in the industry. Averaging about four a month, Conway is crucial to the new wave of e-commerce start ups. Conway’s most recent ventures involve BillFloat, Fluther.com, Flipboard, the Apple iPad app for social media content, Gowalla, the social networking app for Blackberry’s smart phone, and Yahoo’s Bit.ly, the URL shortening service popular on Twitter. He is also in the midst of raising $10 million for Angel Fund to expand SV Angel and is supporting Jeff Adachi’s initiative to avert the pension crisis in Adachi’s bid for San Francisco public defender.