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.