Accel (venture capital firm)

Last updated
Accel
Private Ownership
Industry Venture capital
Founded1983
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Products Venture capital, Growth capital
Website www.accel.com

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, [1] [2] India [3] and China (through a partnership with International Data Group (IDG-Accel)). [4]

Contents

Accel has funded technology companies including Facebook, [5] Slack, [6] Dropbox, [7] Atlassian, [8] Flipkart, [9] Supercell, [10] Spotify, [11] Etsy, [12] Braintree/Venmo, [13] Vox Media, [14] Lynda.com, [15] Qualtrics, [16] DJI, [17] Cloudera, [18] Jet.com, [19] Ethos, [20] GoFundMe, [21] Vectra Networks Inc. [22] FabHotels, BrowserStack, [23] Vinculum Group, [24] Instana, [25] CleverTap [26] and Egyptian Instabug. [27]

History

In 1983, Accel was founded by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz. [28] The co-founders developed the firm's "Prepared Mind" investment philosophy based on the Louis Pasteur quote "Chance favors the prepared mind.", [29] which requires "deep focus [30] " and a disciplined and informed approach to investing. [31]

In 2000, Accel entered a joint-venture with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts to form Accel-KKR a technology-focused private equity investment firm focused on control investments in middle-market companies. [32]

In 2001, Accel opened its London office as a separate fund, to invest in European technology companies, [33] focusing on Series A and Series B investments. [34] Its European investments include Avito (acquired by Naspers for $1.2 billion), [35] BlaBlaCar, [36] Deliveroo, [37] Spotify and Supercell (acquired by Tencent for $8.6 billion), among others.

In addition to Accel's continued investments in early-stage startups from the Accel early stage fund, the firm announced a $480 million growth fund in December 2008, focused on growth equity opportunities in information technology, the internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services. [38]

In March 2016, Accel raised $2 billion, $500 million for an early stage venture fund and $1.5 billion for growth investments. [39] In April 2016, Accel raised a separate $500 million fund for investments in Europe and Israel. [40] In November 2016, Accel's India arm closed its fifth fund with $450 million, about two years after closing its fourth fund with $325 million. [41] [42]

In May 2019 Accel closed a $575 million fund, which led to financing Series A of European and Israel startups. The round was the largest in the region and the total amount of funds managed by Accel reached $3 billion. [43]

Portfolio

Accel is a venture capital firm that concentrates on the following technology sectors: [44] [45]

As of 2020, Accel had 59 unicorns and 7 decacorns in its portfolio. The biggest number of portfolio companies are American startups, but they also have startups from 25 other countries in their portfolio. [46]

Investments

Accel works with seed, early and growth-stage investments. [47] Its seed and early stage investments include Cloudera, Dropbox, Dropcam, Facebook, Flipkart, Jet.com, Podium, Webflow [48] and Slack. The firm’s growth capital investments focus on more developed companies that require a larger amount of capital to expand their business. [49] Examples include Atlassian, DJI and Qualtrics.

Recent exits include:

Though the brand is one, there are at least 4 different, independent legal entities. In the US, it is Accel Management Co. Inc. based in Palo Alto, California. In London, there are Accel London Management Limited and Accel Partners Management LLP. There is also IDG-Accel China, legally IDG VC Management Ltd, located in Hong Kong. [70]

Geographies

Accel's US fund is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in San Francisco, California. [71] Accel's European fund is headquartered in London, England and Accel's India fund is headquartered in Bangalore , India. [72] In addition to the U.S., Accel has investments across in France, [73] Germany, [74] Israel, [75] Australia, [76] New Zealand, [77] Brazil, [78] Canada, [79] China, [80] Finland, India, Switzerland [81] and more.

Related Research Articles

Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups.

Index Ventures

Index Ventures is a European worldwide venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion.

Insight Partners American investment manager

Insight Partners is an American venture capital and private equity firm based in New York City. The firm invests in growth-stage technology, software and Internet businesses.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is an American venture capital firm focusing on early-stage investments in the enterprise technology and consumer space. To date, the firm has backed more than 300 companies, including Snapchat, DoubleClick and AppDynamics.

Institutional Venture Partners

Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is a US-based private equity investment firm focusing on later-stage venture capital and growth equity investments. IVP is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1980.

Greycroft is a venture capital firm. It manages over $2 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo.

Jim Breyer American venture capitalist

James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked #722 with a net worth of US$2.4 billion.

Atlassian Corporation Plc is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers and project managers.

Atomico is a European venture capital firm headquartered in London, with offices in Paris, Beijing, São Paulo, Stockholm, and Tokyo. Its founder and CEO is Niklas Zennström, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Skype and Kazaa. The team includes Hiro Tamura, Chris Barnes, Siraj Khaliq, Niall Wass, and Sophia Bendz.

Slack Technologies, Inc. is an American international software company founded in 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The core team is largely drawn from the founders of Ludicorp, the company that created Flickr.

Carbon Black is a cybersecurity company based in Waltham, Massachusetts. The company develops cloud-native endpoint security software that is designed to detect malicious behavior and to help prevent malicious files from attacking an organization. The company leverages technology known as the Predictive Security Cloud (PSC), a big data and analytics cloud platform that analyzes customers’ unfiltered data for threats.

Anaplan is a global cloud-based planning software company headquartered in San Francisco, California.

BetterCloud, an independent software vendor (ISV) based in New York, NY and with engineering offices in Atlanta, GA, builds unified SaaS management software. A venture-backed startup, BetterCloud has raised $187 million in total funding, with the most recent round was led by Warburg Pincus with series F funding with $75 million raised. A previous round of funding was done in April 2018 was led by Bain Capital Ventures. In December 2016, BetterCloud completed pivot from G Suite to general SaaS management.

Balderton Capital Venture capital firm

Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital.

Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, next-generation compute, semiconductor manufacturing and other technologies.

Scale Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that invests primarily in early-in-revenue technology companies with a focus on Internet, cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS), and mobile products.

CapitalG is a private equity firm under Alphabet Inc. Founded in 2013, it focuses on larger, growth-stage technology companies, and invests for profit rather than strategically for Google. In addition to capital investment, CapitalG's approach includes giving portfolio companies access to Google's people, knowledge, and culture to support the companies' growth and offer them guidance. Since 2013, CapitalG has invested in over 25 companies, in areas such as big data, financial technology, security, and e-learning.

Valar Ventures is a US-based venture capital fund founded by Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald and Peter Thiel. Historically, the majority of the firm's investments have been in technology startups based outside of Silicon Valley, including in Europe, the UK, the US and Canada. Valar Ventures originally spun out of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's global parent company based in San Francisco, and is now headquartered near Union Square in New York City. The firm's namesake is the Valar of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, who are god-like immortal spirits that chose to enter the mortal world to prepare it for their living creations.

Lightspeed (company)

Lightspeed is a point-of-sale and e-commerce software provider based in Montreal, Quebec. It was founded by Dax DaSilva in 2005, who also serves as the CEO of the company. It has offices in Montreal, New York, Olympia, Ottawa, Santa Cruz, Ghent (Belgium) and Amsterdam. It offers its services to 23,000 retail, restaurant, and hospitality businesses, across 100 countries.

References

  1. ↑ "Accel raises $500 million fund to double down on Series A and B rounds in Europe and Israel - Tech.eu" . Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  2. ↑ "Private Equity Week Wire for Tuesday 6/12 - PE HUB". PE HUB. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
  3. ↑ Russell, Jon. "Accel Announces New $305 Million Investment Fund For India". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
  4. ↑ Mac, Ryan (March 19, 2014). "Accel Partners Raises New Funds Totaling Over $1 Billion As Facebook Investor Jim Breyer Reduces Role". Forbes.
  5. ↑ Levy, Ari. "Accel Facebook Bet Poised to Become Biggest Venture Profit: Tech". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  6. ↑ Loizos, Connie. "Andrew Braccia's Big Bet on Slack". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  7. ↑ "Dropbox - Dropbox Raises $250 Million in Series B Funding". Dropbox. Archived from the original on 2016-08-15. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  8. ↑ Tam, Pui-Wing. "Accel Invests $60 Million in Atlassian" . Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  9. ↑ "Flipkart raises $150m from Accel partners and Tiger Global at $850 million valuation". 2012-01-31. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  10. ↑ "Supercell is Accel's fastest growing company ever. (And it has a ball pit)". Pando. 2012-11-28. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  11. ↑ "SPOTIFY: Now It's A $1 Billion Company" . Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  12. ↑ Schonfeld, Erick. "Etsy Raises $27 Million; Accel's Jim Breyer Joins Board". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  13. ↑ "Mobile Payments Startup Venmo Acquired by Braintree". 2012-08-16. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  14. ↑ Eldon, Eric. "Why Accel Is Leading A $40M Round In Vox Media, A Digital Content Company (!)". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  15. ↑ Empson, Rip. "After 17 Years, Education Platform Lynda.com Raises Its First Round Of Funding, $103M From Accel & Spectrum". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  16. ↑ Ha, Anthony. "Qualtrics Raises $70M From Accel And Sequoia: "The Biggest Software Company You Haven't Heard Of"?". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  17. ↑ Reuters (2015-05-06). "Chinese Drone Maker DJI Gets $75 Million From Accel Partners". Recode. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  18. ↑ Wauters, Robin. "Cloudera Raises $5 Million Series A Round For Hadoop Commercialization". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  19. ↑ "The Man Who Knows Amazon's Brutal Tactics Better Than Anyone Just Sealed $80 Million In Funding For His New Company" . Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  20. ↑ Browne, Ryan (2018-10-30). "Google, Accel and Jay Z invest in life insurance start-up Ethos, valuing it at more than $100 million". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-08-14.
  21. ↑ "GoFundMe Gets Undisclosed Funding Led by Accel Partners, TCV | Xconomy". 2015-06-24. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  22. ↑ "Vectra raises $36 million for its AI cybersecurity technology". 2018-02-21. Retrieved 2018-04-16.
  23. ↑ "BrowserStack hauls in $50 million Series A from Accel". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-07-11.
  24. ↑ "SaaS firm Vinculum raises Series B funding from IvyCap Ventures and Accel Partners". vccircle. Retrieved 2014-04-03.
  25. ↑ "Instana Secures $30 Million Series C Investment Led By Meritech To Extend Automated Monitoring". Instana. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
  26. ↑ "WizRocket secures $8M from Sequoia and Accel Partners". MediaNama. 2015-08-04. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  27. ↑ "YC's Instabug raises $1.7M Seed round led by Accel to grow beyond bugs". Techcrunch. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  28. ↑ "Accel Team Jim Swartz".
  29. ↑ "A Venture Capitalist View of the Top 5 Entrepreneurial Energy Opportunities" . Retrieved 2016-09-19.
  30. ↑ "Accel Partners, Venture Capital Fund: Andrew Braccia, Investments". www.fundingpost.com. Retrieved 2016-09-19.
  31. ↑ "Accel Boosts Team - PE Hub". 2013-07-24. Retrieved 2016-09-19.
  32. ↑ "History of Kohlberg, Kravis, Robert & Co".
  33. ↑ Kapner, Suzanne (2001-05-30). "U.S. Venture Capital Sees Treasure in Europe". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  34. ↑ Dillet, Romain. "Venture firm Accel just raised a new $500 million European fund". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  35. ↑ "Naspers acquires Russia's Avito in $1.2 billion transaction" . Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  36. ↑ Rao, Leena. "Accel Leads $10M Round In European Airbnb For Car Ride-Sharing, BlablaCar". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  37. ↑ "Deliveroo grabs $25M to bring its premium meal delivery service to more cities". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  38. ↑ "Accel closes two funds totaling more than $1B".
  39. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/business/dealbook/accel-raises-2-billion-to-invest-in-start-ups.html?_r=0
  40. ↑ Dillet, Romain. "Venture firm Accel just raised a new $500 million European fund". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-11.
  41. ↑ Loizos, Connie. "Accel India closes its newest fund with $450 million — and in record time". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-12-03.
  42. ↑ "Accel Closes India Venture Fund". Fortune. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  43. ↑ "Accel closes $575M fund to double down on European and Israeli Series A deals". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  44. ↑ "Accel". www.accel.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-08. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  45. ↑ "Accel Partners Teardown". 2016-02-05. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  46. ↑ "Accel at Unicorn Nest" . Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  47. ↑ "Accel Partners Teardown". 2016-02-05. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
  48. ↑ "No-Code Website Builder Webflow Went From Near Bankruptcy To A $72 Million Series A Funding Round". Forbes. August 7, 2019.
  49. ↑ Loizos, Connie. "Venture firm Accel Partners just raised $2B from its investors". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
  50. ↑ "Arista Networks IPO values company at about $2.75 billion" . Retrieved 2014-06-05.
  51. ↑ "The Strategist". www.thestrategist.media. Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  52. ↑ ChrisSpillane, Ilya Khrennikov Christopher Spillane. "Naspers Takes Control of Russia's Avito in $1.2 Billion Purchase". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  53. ↑ Rao, Leena; Perez, Sarah; Lunden, Ingrid. "EBay's PayPal Acquires Payments Gateway Braintree For $800M In Cash". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  54. ↑ Kendall, Marisa. "Cloudera, Silicon Valley's latest IPO, pops in first day trading". Mercury News. Retrieved 2017-04-28.
  55. ↑ "Argentine travel firm Despegar stock jumps on U.S. IPO". Reuters. 2017-09-20. Retrieved 2017-09-20.
  56. ↑ "Etsy prices its IPO at $16 per share, making it worth $1.78 billion" . Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  57. ↑ Raice, Shayndi; Das, Anupreeta; Letzing, John (2012-05-18). "Facebook Prices IPO at Record Value". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  58. ↑ Barinka, Alex. "Accel-Backed ForeScout Climbs After Raising $116 Million in IPO". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
  59. ↑ Cao, Jing; King, Ian. "SanDisk to Buy Fusion-io for $1.1 Billion". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  60. ↑ "Ritchie Bros. Completes Its Acquisition of IronPlanet" . Retrieved 2017-05-31.
  61. ↑ Selina_y_wang, Shannon Pettypiece spettypi Selina Wang. "Wal-Mart to Acquire Jet.com for $3.3 Billion to Fight Amazon". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  62. ↑ "Salesforce Buys Krux, the Data-Management Platform, for $700 Million" . Retrieved 2016-10-03.
  63. ↑ "LinkedIn Enters Ed Tech with Lynda.com Acquisition – Its Largest Acquisition Ever". 2015-04-09. Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  64. ↑ "It's Official: China's Wanda Acquires Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 Billion" . Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  65. ↑ Forsell, Thomas (2017-09-28). "Angry Birds maker Rovio valued at $1 billion in IPO". Reuters. Retrieved 2017-09-28.
  66. ↑ Osawa, Juro; Needleman, Sarah E. (2016-06-21). "Tencent Seals Deal to Buy 'Clash of Clans' Developer Supercell for $8.6 Billion". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  67. ↑ "'A sigh of relief' for Silicon Valley as consumer-Web stock Trulia soars in IPO" . Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  68. ↑ Christie, Les (2014-07-28). "Zillow buys Trulia for $3.5 billion". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  69. ↑ "Tiger Global and Accel lead facility management startup Facilio's $6.4M Series A". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-12-05.
  70. ↑ https://www.accel.com/legal
  71. ↑ "Accel". www.accel.com. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  72. ↑ "Accel". www.accel.com. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  73. ↑ "Boosting the French Ecosystem, by Philippe Botteri (Accel Partners) - Bonjour la French Tech". 2015-10-15. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  74. ↑ "Accel Partners is coming to town and here is how you meet them". 2014-07-09. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  75. ↑ "Accel Partners hires Facebook exec to focus funds on Israel". Geektime. 2016-06-08. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  76. ↑ "Inside Accel Partners' $US200m search for Australia's next tech titan". 2014-10-07. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  77. ↑ Ryall, Jenni. "New Zealand startup Xero scores $147 million from Silicon Valley investor". Mashable. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  78. ↑ Shieber, Jonathan. "Accel Renews Commitment To Brazilian Startups With $10M EduK Investment". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  79. ↑ "As Canadian startups grow, local venture capital funding dries up" . Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  80. ↑ Barboza, David. "Accel's Breyer to Partner With Venture Capital Firm in China" . Retrieved 2016-09-15.
  81. ↑ "100 Tech Investors Active in the Nordics - Standout Capital". 2014-04-02. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.