Accel Partners

Accel Partners

Type	Private Ownership
Industry	Venture capital
Founded	1983
Headquarters	Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Products	Venture capital, Growth capital
Website	www.accel.com

Accel Partners is a global venture and growth equity firm. Accel funds companies from inception through the growth stage.

Using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, Accel manages over $8.8 billion from offices in Palo Alto, California, New York City, London, India and China (through a partnership with IDG-Accel)

Over the last three decades, Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Facebook, Groupon, Cloudera, AdMob, Dropbox, 99Designs, Glam Media, Spotify, Etsy, Angry Birds (Rovio), Braintree, Lookout, SunRun, TRUSTe, Kayak, Macromedia, metroPCS, and Walmart.com.

History

Accel Partners was founded in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz.

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

In addition to Accel's continued investments in early-stage startups from the Accel X early stage fund, Accel announced its $480 million growth fund in December of 2008. This fund has focused on growth equity opportunities across a broad range of sectors, including: information technology, internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services. As with Accel's early-stage efforts, Accel Growth Fund has played an active role in helping entrepreneurs and management teams build category-defining, global businesses.

In April 2009, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, formerly Google's President for Asia-Pacific & Latin American Operations, came on board as CEO-in-residence.

Founder of RealNetworks, Rob Glaser joined Accel's Venture Development team in June 2010, focusing on digital media technology, social media, and mobile service investments.

Locations and People

Palo Alto

Eleven partners are based in Accel’s Palo Alto office: Andrew Braccia, Jim Breyer, Kevin Efrusy, Sameer Gandhi, Ping Li, Todd Maclean, Arthur Patterson, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Jim Swartz, Ryan Sweeney, Rich Wong.

London

Six partners are based in Accel’s London office: Philippe Botterri, Kevin Comolli, Sonali De Rycker, Bruce Golden, Harry Nelis, Adam Valkin

India

Four partners are based in Accel’s India office: Mahendran Balachandran, Shekhar Kirani, Subrata Mitra, Prashanth Prakash.

China

Accel’s investments in China are operated through a partnership with IDG Capital Partners

Portfolio companies (past and present)

• Actuate
• AdMob
• Alfresco
• Altor Networks
• AMCC
• Atlassian
• Baidu
• BBN Technologies
• Braintree
• BranchOut
• Brightcove
• Capital Access Network
• ComScore
• Etsy
• Facebook
• Focus Media
• Foundry Networks
• Gameforge
• Gigle Networks
• Glam Media
• Infinera
• Interwoven
• JBoss
• Kayak
• Knewton
• Lyst
• Macromedia
• metroPCS
• NetVMG
• Nimbula
• Polycom/PictureTel
• Portal Software
• QlikTech
• Real Networks
• Redback Networks
• Riverbed Technology
• SB Nation
• Sohu.com
• UUNet
• Veritas
• Walmart.com
• Webroot
• XenSource
• Zimbra
• Nimble Storage
• Flipkart

External links

• Accel Partners (company website)
• Crunchbase Profile