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, while he represented Accel investment in BBN. He sat on both boards (and also is a board member of Facebook, Dell, Walmart, Etsy, Brightcove, Prosper, and Real Networks). At BBN, Accel co-led a management buyout five years ago with General Catalyst Partners.
BBN is a storied technology R&D powerhouse. Started in 1948 by a group of MIT professors, it invented many of the technologies of the early Internet, including packet switching (1969), the first network email (1971), the first router (1976). It also came up with the @ sign, but much of its work is for the military, which is why Raytheon snapped it up.
Other recent exits for Accel include VMWare’s $420 million acquisition of SpringSource in August and Yahoo buying Xoopit for $20 million in July.