Industry Venture capital Founded 1983 | Website www.accel.com Type of business Private Ownership | |
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Products Venture capital, Growth capital Headquarters Palo Alto, California, United States Founders James R. Swartz, Arthur Patterson Profiles | ||
Surviving your first 24 months as a startup fred destin accel partners pioneers festival 2014
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel funds companies from inception through the growth stage. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China (through a partnership with International Data Group (IDG-Accel)).
Contents
- Surviving your first 24 months as a startup fred destin accel partners pioneers festival 2014
- Stewart butterfield slack and andrew braccia accel partners at startup grind global 2016
- History
- Portfolio
- Investments
- Geographies
- References
Accel has funded more than 300 companies, including Facebook, Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian, Flipkart, Supercell, Spotify, Etsy, Braintree/Venmo, Vox Media, Lynda.com, Qualtrics, DJI, Cloudera, Jet.com and GoFundMe.
Stewart butterfield slack and andrew braccia accel partners at startup grind global 2016
History
In 1983, Accel was founded by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz. The co-founders developed the firm's "Prepared Mind" investment philosophy based on the Louis Pasteur quote "Chance favors the prepared mind.", which requires "deep focus" and a disciplined and informed approach to investing.
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 2001, Accel opened its first London office to invest in European technology companies, focusing on Series A and Series B investments. Its European investments include Avito (acquired by Naspers for $1.2 billion), BlaBlaCar, Deliveroo, 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 X early stage fund, the firm announced a $480 million growth fund in December 2008, focused on growth equity opportunities in information technology, internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services.
In March 2016, Accel raised $2 billion, $500 million for an early stage venture fund and $1.5 billion for growth investments. In April 2016, Accel raised a separate $500 million fund for investments in Europe and Israel. 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.
Portfolio
Accel is a venture capital firm that concentrates on the following technology sectors:
Investments
Accel specializes in seed, early and growth-stage investments. Its seed and early stage investments include Cloudera, Dropbox, Dropcam, Facebook, Flipkart, Jet.com and Slack. The firm’s growth capital investments focus on more developed companies that require a larger amount of capital to expand their business. Examples include Atlassian, DJI and Qualtrics.
Recent exits include:
Geographies
Accel is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in San Francisco, California, London, England and Bangalore, India. In addition to the U.S., Accel has investments across in France, Germany, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, India, Switzerland and more.