Accel (company)

Last updated
Accel
FormerlyAccel Partners
Company type Private
Industry Venture capital
Founded1983;41 years ago (1983)
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

History

In 1983, Accel was founded by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz. [5] The co-founders developed the firm's "Prepared Mind" investment philosophy based on the Louis Pasteur quote "Chance favors the prepared mind.", [6] which requires "deep focus [7] " and a disciplined and informed approach to investing. [8]

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. [9]

In 2001, Accel opened its London office as a separate fund, to invest in European technology companies, [10] focusing on Series A and Series B investments. [11] Its European investments include Avito (acquired by Naspers for $1.2 billion), [12] BlaBlaCar, [13] Deliveroo, [14] HopIn, [15] Spotify and Supercell (acquired by Tencent for $8.6 billion) and UiPath [16] 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. [17]

In March 2016, Accel raised $2 billion, $500 million for an early stage venture fund and $1.5 billion for growth investments. [18] In April 2016, Accel raised a separate $500 million fund for investments in Europe and Israel. [19] 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. [20] [21]

In May 2019 Accel closed a $575 million fund, which led to financing Series A of European and Israeli startups. The round was the largest in the region and the total amount of funds managed by Accel reached $3 billion. [22]

Portfolio

Accel is a venture capital firm that concentrates on the following technology sectors: [23] [24]

Investments

Accel works with seed, early and growth-stage investments. [25] Its seed and early stage investments include Cloudera, Dropbox, Dropcam, Facebook, Flipkart, Jet.com, Podium, Webflow [26] and Slack. The firm's growth capital investments focus on more developed companies that require a larger amount of capital to expand their business. [27] Examples include Atlassian, DJI and Qualtrics. [28]

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. [49]

Geographies

Accel's US fund is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in San Francisco, California. [50] Accel's European fund is headquartered in London, England and Accel's India fund is headquartered in Bangalore, India. [51]

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References

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  2. ↑ "Private Equity Week Wire for Tuesday 6/12 - PE HUB". PE HUB. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
  3. ↑ Russell, Jon (24 March 2015). "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. ↑ "Accel Team Jim Swartz". Archived from the original on 2016-01-24. Retrieved 2016-01-01.
  6. ↑ "A Venture Capitalist View of the Top 5 Entrepreneurial Energy Opportunities" . Retrieved 2016-09-19.
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  9. ↑ "History of Kohlberg, Kravis, Robert & Co".
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  20. ↑ Loizos, Connie (30 November 2016). "Accel India closes its newest fund with $450 million — and in record time". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-12-03.
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  22. ↑ "Accel closes $575M fund to double down on European and Israeli Series A deals". TechCrunch. 15 May 2019. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
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  32. ↑ Rao, Leena; Perez, Sarah; Lunden, Ingrid (26 September 2013). "EBay's PayPal Acquires Payments Gateway Braintree For $800M In Cash". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on Sep 25, 2016. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  33. ↑ Kendall, Marisa (April 28, 2017). "Cloudera, Silicon Valley's latest IPO, pops in first day trading". Mercury News. Retrieved 2017-04-28. But some of the excitement that performance should have caused was tempered because Cloudera ended the day worth about $2.3 billion — a far cry from the $4.1 billion valuation it last received as a private company.
  34. ↑ Subba, Nikhil; Rabouin, Dion (2017-09-20). Ravikumar, Sai Sachin; O'Brien, Rosalba (eds.). "Argentine travel firm Despegar stock jumps on U.S. IPO". Reuters. Retrieved 2017-09-20.
  35. ↑ D'Onfro, Jillian (Apr 15, 2015). "Etsy prices its IPO at $16 per share, making it worth $1.78 billion". Business Insider . Retrieved 2016-08-18.
  36. ↑ Raice, Shayndi; Das, Anupreeta; Letzing, John (2012-05-18). "Facebook Prices IPO at Record Value" . Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660. Archived from the original on Aug 26, 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-18. At $38 a share, Facebook is valued at $104 billion, the biggest-ever valuation by an American company at the time of its offering.
  37. ↑ Barinka, Alex (October 26, 2017). "Accel-Backed ForeScout Climbs After Raising $116 Million in IPO" . Bloomberg. Archived from the original on Oct 28, 2017. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
  38. ↑ Cao, Jing; King, Ian (16 June 2014). "SanDisk to Buy Fusion-io for $1.1 Billion" . Bloomberg. Archived from the original on Sep 11, 2016. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
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  43. ↑ "It's Official: China's Wanda Acquires Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 Billion". The Hollywood Reporter . 11 January 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-18.
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  45. ↑ 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.
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  49. ↑ "Accel - Legal".
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  51. ↑ "Connect". Accel. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
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