Jon Bayless, 59
General Partner
Sevin Rosen Funds, Dallas
Sevin Rosen was the most famous Texas venture capital firm in the early eighties when it was the early lead investor in wildly successful companies like Compaq and Lotus Development. With a fund of about $580 million, Sevin Rosen is still a powerhouse—and Bayless is the heaviest hitter, especially in telecommunications investments. A Ph.D. in electrical engineering who has been with the firm since 1981, he is revered in Dallas' telecom corridor for picking winners. His latest grand slam is Monterey Networks, a Richardson start-up. Last year Cisco Systems acquired Monterey for $500 million—before it had even sold a single product.

John Thornton, 34
General Partner
Austin Ventures, Austin
With more than $1.6 billion already doled out, Austin Ventures is the state's hottest high-tech venture capital firm in the state's hottest city for dot-com and Web-related entrepreneurial activity. And Thornton is the money guy to know right now. As the general partner who focuses on investments in software, e-commerce, and media, he has worked with some of Texas' most successful start-ups, including garden.com, Ignite Sports Media, and Vignette, and he was instrumental in putting together Austin Ventures' new $825 million fund, making the firm the third-largest of its kind in the nation. He's constantly on the prowl for more e-deals—so get those business plans ready.

John Hime, 51 Bob Inman, 68 George Kozmetsky, 82 Mike Maples, Sr., 57 Marc Seriff, 51
Austin and the Hill Country
High-tech start-ups are lucky to be touched by one of these angels—private investors who put their own cash into risky new ventures (they aren't the only ones in Texas, but they're the ones involved in the highest-profile deals). Most are retired high-tech execs who cashed out of their companies and now write checks and serve as key advisers to promising start-ups. Hime was the vice president of marketing at Austin's Tivoli Systems and spent ten years with Silicon Valley start-ups, including Sun Microsystems. Inman was the deputy director of Central Intelligence and headed the Austin computer consortium MCC (see "How I Made It"). Kozmetsky, the elder statesman of high-tech start-ups, founded both IC², a think tank affiliated with the University of Texas, and the Capital Network, which helps match investors with companies. Maples oversaw IBM's software strategy and was responsible for all product development and marketing at Microsoft, where he was a member of the office of the president, reporting directly to Bill Gates (he is still a consultant with the company). Seriff, an Austin native, co-founded America Online back in the days when it was known as Quantum Computer Service. Unlike traditional venture capitalists, these angels can take more chances and be more patient about seeing a return on their investment; typically, they kick in $50,000 to $250,000 in the first round. Collectively, they've invested in and advised dozens of new companies, including Computer Moms International, Mission Critical Software, living.com, and hire.com.

Laura Kilcrease, 42
Partner and Founder
Triton Ventures, Austin
The U.K.-born Kilcrease is a rarity: a female venture capitalist and one of the few trailblazing women in Texas high tech. She's known as a mother hen of sorts in Austin for starting the Austin Technology Incubator in 1989; during her ten-year tenure as its director, it grew and nurtured more than 120 high-tech companies and was named the best such organization in the nation. In January 1999 she started her own small venture firm, and so far, she's invested in five start-ups, including charitygift.com and Applied Science Fiction. She also sits on the board of the influential Austin Software Council.