These mini-profiles highlight entrepreneurs we either invested in or wish we had invested in. They demonstrate the incredible range of outstanding entrepreneurs we have met during our careers as both investors and entrepreneurs ourselves. We celebrate their existence, their drive, and their perseverance because they make possible what we do, which is to try to help with money and whatever other assistance we can provide. The list is not exhaustive, so feel free to suggest new Hall of Famers to us or provide other feedback!

Jeong Kim founded Yurie Systems. After Lucent bought the company for more than $1 billion in 1998, it put Jeong in charge of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. Stewart and Gilman sought out Jeong for advice about their new fund. At an all-night Korean diner in New York, Jeong explained that there are three conditions for starting great companies: a supportive ecosystem (universities, research labs, strong legal & financial infrastructure and a tradition of entrepreneurship), access to sufficient capital, and an entrepreneur willing to take chances. “Of course, in the absence of the first two conditions, the real entrepreneur is going to do it anyway.”

Sam Morgan was 30 when Stewart met him last summer in New Zealand. He started a company called TradeMe when he was 23. TradeMe became a combination of eBay, Amazon, Craigslist and other ecommerce businesses for Kiwis, eventually registering 1.4M people, a third of all the people in New Zealand, as customers. The company was sold early in 2006 for more than NZ$700M. Sam is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

John MacFarlane is a founder and the CEO of Sonos Inc., where Stewart is an independent director (not an investor). John also founded Software.com, which merged with Phone.com to form the publicly traded company called Openwave (OPWV). John is one of the most open, focused entrepreneurs Stewart has had a chance to work with. Sonos’s system for distributing music around a house using a wireless mesh network is just a totally cool thing.

Mike Cassidy is the founder of Xfire as well as two other companies. Stewart lead an investment in Xfire for New Enterprise Associates, where he used to work, in 2004. The company was sold to MTV Networks early in 2006. Stewart learned from Mike that it’s possible to have very effective board meetings in less than two hours, working from exactly the same one-page outline at every meeting.

Ruth Owades founded two direct-marketing businesses. She started Gardener’s Eden in 1979 and sold it to Williams-Sonoma 3 years later. Then she started Calyx & Corolla in 1989 and sold it to a private investor group in 1999. She is the kind of entrepreneur who views venture capital as an alternative, not a destination and both of her companies are documented in case studies written by Harvard Business School and taught at business schools around the world.

Jeff Jonas founded a company called SRD, which developed a technology called NORA, for Non Obvious Relationship Awareness. It used data analysis to figure out when card dealers were cooperating with players for the big casinos in Las Vegas. The company was sold to IBM which calls the group IBM Entity Analytics. Jonas is now a distinguished engineer and chief scientist at IBM, possibly the only one who never finished high school!