Lists, like the Fortune 500 or the Sunday Times Fast Track 100, are incredibly powerful marketing tools. They raise awareness, create aspirational feelings; encouraging others to aim for those very same goals.

This is just a thought, but creating a list of the very best, most active, angel investors and celebrating them could provide the impetus for others to find out about the rewards of angel investing. The list would most likely require inordinate amounts of work to provide weight and accuracy. A national media partner would also be a must, to ensure prominence to the hard work that goes into compiling and computing numbers to create the list.

How would we rank angels? Entirely on a mathematical basis, to keep things fair:

1. How many startups have they invested in

2. How many startups in the last 12 months have been invested in

3. Percentage of deals they led on

4. How much they have to invest in the next 1/2/5 years

5. Size of deals that they invest in (i.e. does their presence lead to others investing also)

N.B. VCs, while often valuable, would be excluded from the list unless they take the same risk and invest their own cash.

As a name, The Startup Halo 100 seems appropriate.