Accel Partners

Accel Partners

Type	Private Ownership
Industry	Venture capital
Founded	1983
Headquarters	Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Products	Venture capital, Growth capital
Website	www.accel.com

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)).

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.

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.

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