In 2005 Accel Partners closed its $440 million Accel 9 Fund. That fund may not go down in history as the most profitable venture fund ever, but it will certainly be one to remember. Why? Facebook, for the most part. It is a stunning turnaround for a firm that many whispered was pretty much done earlier in the decade.
In 2005 Accel invested a small part of that fund – just $12.7 million – in… → Read More
Most of the apps being developed for Android phones are consumer apps. Yet enterprise apps could be much more lucrative. One startup focusing on enterprise apps for Android is 3LM, a company so stealth that it’s Website is nothing more than a Google Sites landing page with nothing on it but the words “Coming Soon.” The top search result for 3LM links to this question on Quora, which remained… → Read More
When you want to hang out with your friends online, you go to Facebook. When you want to look for a job, you go to LinkedIn. Well, maybe not for long. BranchOut, a startup that is essentially building a LinkedIn for Facebook, raised $6 million in a series A round. Several news sites reported the funding yesterday when the SEC filing came out, but other than Accel Partners, none of the… → Read More
“So ResearchGATE is Facebook for Scientists?” I asked ex-Facebook exec, current Benchmark Capital general partner and new ResearchGATE investor Matt Cohler. “I bristle at that characterization,” he responded telling me that doesn’t adequately describe the company.
Either way he’s invested in the Berlin based startup, along with Accel Partners, Simon Levene, Michael Birch, Joachim Schoss, Martin… → Read More
Crafty commerce site Etsy just raised another $20 million in its fifth venture round (that would be the Series E). Index Ventures is the new investor leading the round, with partner Danny Rimer getting an observer’s seat on the board. (The board is made up of founder Rob Kalin, Caterina Fake, Accel partner Jim Breyer and Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson). Previous investors Accel and… → Read More
It is not often that a company’s first round of venture funding comes in at $60 million and eight years after it was founded with $10,000 worth of credit card debt. But Atlassian, which was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2002, is taking its first venture money today from Accel Partners. The company pulled in $59 million in revenues in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, and has been… → Read More
It is not often that a company’s first round of venture funding comes in at $60 million and eight years after it was founded with $10,000 worth of credit card debt. But Atlassian, which was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2002, is taking its first venture money today from Accel Partners. The company pulled in $59 million in revenues in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, and has been… → Read More
Application store company GetJar this morning announced it has secured $11 million in a Series B funding round led by previous backer Accel Partners, report PaidContent and others.
The company says it plans to use the funding to bolster its consumer-facing sites as well as its professional solutions geared towards app developers and publishers. → Read More
Application store company GetJar this morning announced it has secured $11 million in a Series B funding round led by previous backer Accel Partners, report PaidContent and others.
The company says it plans to use the funding to bolster its consumer-facing sites as well as its professional solutions geared towards app developers and publishers. → Read More
Booyah is the not-so-little location based engine that could. The company behind MyTown has raised $20 million in new funding from a group of investors led by Accel (current investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures, also participated in this round). Accel’s Jim Breyer, a board member of Wal-Mart, Dell and Facebook, will join Booyah’s board. (According to a source close to… → Read More
Online educational technology startup Knewton has completed a $12.5 million round of funding led by New York City-based VC firm FirstMark Capital, after securing a $6 million Series B round of financing a little over a year ago.
Returning investors include Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, First Round Capital, and angel investor Reid Hoffman, who are bringing the total of capital… → Read More
[UK] Lovefilm co-founder and ex-CEO Adam Valkin has joined VC firm Accel in London as a partner. Most recently Valkin was head of digital and new business at Endemol Group, and prior to that he spent nine years as an investor at Arts Alliance Advisors where he invested in and managed portfolio companies in Europe and Israel.
Accel Partners is focused on investing in early stage technology… → Read More
Israeli genealogy site MyHeritage has completed its third acquisition, buying Germany’s OSN. OSN operates seven genealogy sites including Verwandt.de in Germany, Moikrewni.pl in Poland and Dynastree.com in the US. It was launched in 2007 just after LA-based Geni and, at first, it was just your typical German clone. But it added features and grew fast in older European markets like Germany and… → Read More
The way venture capital firms are structured makes it almost impossible for outsiders to see what’s really going on inside those 1970s lodge-like Sand Hill Road offices. It’s an industry perfectly structured for sweeping problems under the rug, and as its fundamentals have declined over the last decade, that’s just what it’s been doing. But those big, lumpy problems are getting harder and… → Read More
Private online shopping clubs are springing up like mushrooms all around the world in light of the successes companies like Vente Privée has been seeing, and venture capital firms are increasingly starting to invest in companies who are bringing the concept to specific niches or introducing the private online sales model to interesting geographical markets.
In the latter category falls Russian … → Read More
Private online shopping clubs are springing up like mushrooms all around the world in light of the successes companies like Vente Privée has been seeing, and venture capital firms are increasingly starting to invest in companies who are bringing the concept to specific niches or introducing the private online sales model to interesting geographical markets.
In the latter category falls Russian … → Read More
In September, defense contractor Raytheon announced an agreement to purchase R&D innovator BBN Technologies, but didn’t say for how much. Today, the deal closed and the price came out. It is $350 million.
Investors Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners, who co-led a management buyout in 2004, made out very nicely. Accel says that its cut was more than $100 million, which suggests it… → Read More
In the third quarter of 2009, we saw a slight rebound in venture funding from earlier in the year. But which venture capital firms were the most active in the quarter? One of my favorite new tables in our latest TechCrunch Trends report, which is based on company data we collect in CrunchBase, is the ranking of the most active venture capital firms.
We’ve reproduced that ranking below in two… → Read More
For more TechCrunch Analysis, check out the Q3 09 Trends Report here.
Which venture capitalists had the most exist last quarter? A peek at Crunchbase data shows that Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Foundation Capital and New Enterprise Asosciates all recorded at least three exits by acquisition in Q3 2009.
The four firms were all also among the ten most active investors in CrunchBase in the… → Read More
Accel Partners has poured $4.5 million into Causata, a San Francisco-based software startup that provides tools companies can use to optimize customer experience and business results.
The Series A round actually closed back in April this year, but the name of the investor has only now been made public through a regulatory filing, reports peHUB. Judging by messages posted this morning on the… → Read More
Investor Jim Breyer of Accel Partners is having a very good day. In the past 24 hours, two companies where he is an investor and board member have been acquired for big bucks: Marvel Entertainment, which was bought yesterday by Disney for $4 billion, and BBN Technologies, which was bought this morning by defense contractor Raytheon for an undisclosed amount.
Breyer invested personally in Marvel… → Read More
Do venture investors with the biggest and best networks end up producing the best returns? An academic paper from a few years ago by Yael Hochberg, Alexander Ljungqvist, and Yang Lu titled “Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance” (embedded at the bottom of this post) suggests that is the case. They looked at historic venture returns and found that… → Read More
Online educational startup Knewton has raised $6 million in Series B financing from Bessemer Venture Partners and returning investors, which include VC firms Accel Partners and First Round Capital as well as several angel investors who had participated in the $2.5 million Series A round from May 2008, such as LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid Hoffman and Zenbe co-founder Peter Stern.
The company… → Read More
Cloudera is definitely a startup that will have many eyes fixed on it in the future. Backed by an impressive list of investors and advisors and run by a team of experienced technology veterans, it’s doing interesting things with equally interesting open-source software. The company is today announcing the general availability of its flagship product, Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop, in… → Read More
Accel India Venture Fund, which came out of Accel’s recent absorption of Indian VC firm Erasmic, as predicted has closed $60 million in a second round of funding new fund (the earlier round was fund had raised $12mn), according to Pluggdin.
Accel believes that seed and early stage markets continue to be under served in India, attracting less than 5% of the total venture capital funds. The firm… → Read More
Is India finally ready to produce some world-shaking Web companies? It certainly has the raw talent. And increasingly it has the capital. Accel is the latest VC fund to focus on the sub-continent. It absorbed Indian VC firm Erasmic, and is relaunching it as the Accel India Venture Fund. One of Erasmic’s investors is Google. The fund does seed-stage investing inside India, and will continue… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
