Paul Madera founded late-stage venture firm Meritech in 1999 and helped build it into one of the most successful firms in Silicon Valley. Madera's consistently high perch on the Midas List is largely due to a growth equity investment in Facebook, but he scored solid exits with Tensilica (acquired by Cadence for $380 million in March 2013) and flash storage play Fusion-io (IPO 2011). Madera also scored with Force10 Networks and BlueArc (acquired in 2011 by Dell and Hitachi Data Systems, respectively). Current Madera-led investments range from Glaukos, which creates an implantable stent to control glaucoma, to DataStax, a big data company. Of Meritech's famous investment in the world's biggest social network, Madera said, "I remember speaking with Mark Zuckerberg early on. He told me he envisioned Facebook to be the place people go when they first turn on their computers in the morning and the last place they go when they turn them off at night." Madera, an active duty F-4 and F-16 pilot in the US Air Force before going to business school, serves as chairman of the Air Force Academy's endowment.

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