Much has changed in two years, when Forbes last published its list of top venture capitalists. Fresh competition emerged abroad and from a new flock of angel investors. Firms shrank and returns declined. These 10 investors buck those trends, create wealth and fund the new ideas that bring them on the Forbes's list of 2011 top 10 tech investors.

   Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz)

The poster boy for the Web 1.0 generation is successfully reinventing himself as a Web 2.0 venture capitalist. He debuts on our list because of his seed investments in Twitter and LinkedIn, and gets points for his firm's later stage investments in Groupon, Skype and Zynga. Andreessen plans to model his firm Andreessen-Horowitz after Hollywood's Creative Artist Agency back in its heyday, when onetime super-agent Michael Ovitz built C.A.A. into the Yankees of Hollywood.

That has some eyes rolling on Sand Hill Road but as cofounder of Netscape, Opsware and Ning, the web wunderkind has street cred with entrepreneurs--notably Mark Zuckerberg, who asked him to join Facebook's board. Andreessen also serves on the boards of eBay, Skype and Hewlett-Packard. The entrepreneur he would most like to back? "Steve Jobs, no question," says Andreessen.