Most venture capitalists have hordes of entrepreneurs clamoring for a few moments of their time. Jonathan Meeks prizes his list of people who don't want to take his calls.rnMeeks, then a vice president with TA Associates, first rang Sunil Hirani, cofounder of the New York electronic derivatives broker Creditex, in 2003. The former NASA software guru firmly told Meeks that his four-year-old firm was profitable, growing and didn't need his money. For three years Meeks logged monthly calls to Hirani, quizzing him on the economics of brokerage firms and swapping industry gossip.rnWhen another Creditex cofounder needed to sell his stake, Hirani ushered the deal to Meeks, who bought 50% of the firm for $57 million. Last June, five years after Meeks' first call, he got his reward: Intercontinental Exchange paid $650 million for Creditex, earning Meeks four times his investment and launching him to number 83 on the Forbes Midas List of tech dealmakers.rnA few years ago merely quadrupling an investment over five years wouldn't have given you anything to brag about in the exclusive club on Sand Hill Road. John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital (numbers one and two on this year's list) earned hundreds of times their money by putting it into Google and Yahoo when those firms were barely business plans.
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