Jim Breyer, the star venture partner at Accel, is a very busy man. He sits on the boards of Facebook, Walmart, News Corp, and Dell, among others. I caught up with him last week at the Techonomy conference, where he talked about what areas Accel is investing in. In Part I of my video interview above, he explains his interest in the “intersection of media, technology and consumer commerce.”
Accel’s focus these days is very much social, mobile, and global. “We have more partners in China than Palo Alto,” he tells me. Brazil is huge also.
He is also intrigued by “next-generation social TV” and how mobile and social will change entertainment consumption. “What gets us excited as venture capitalists is how the video experience is intersecting with social and changing consumption,” he says. But most media startups don’t quite yet fit the bill. “We see 10,000 media business plans a year, and we invest in about ten,” he notes.
One of those is Angry Birds, which he considers a media company and Accel just invested in (through partner Rich Wong). He hints that Accel invested in Angry Birds because of what they saw in its pipeline, as much as for what it’s already built. I came away from this interview feeling more strongly than before that the future of media is very much mobile and social, like all good things on the internet.
Jim has been an investor in over thirty consumer internet, media, and technology companies that have completed public offerings or successful mergers. Many of these investments returned over 20 times their cost to investors. In April 2011, Forbes published its Midas List of top technology investors and ranked Jim Breyer #1. In August 2010, Fortune Magazine named Breyer the #1 smartest investor in technology, and one of the 10 smartest people in all of technology. Jim is currently on...
Accel Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices located in Silicon Valley, New York, London, China, and India. They typically make multi-stage investments in internet technology companies. Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of excellence and innovation in the venture capital business and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class companies. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo...
Rovio is one of Europe’s leading independent developers of wireless games with an ever-growing portfolio of award-winning titles spanning many genres from casual to core next-gen console IP. Their studio has developed games for some of the biggest names in the mobile space, including Electronic Arts, Nokia, Vivendi, Namco Bandai and Mr. Goodliving/Real Networks. The seeds of Rovio were sown in 2003 when Helsinki University of Technology students Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim Dikert participated in a mobile game...
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