The Ledger
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Accel's returns were not top-tier prior to its Facebook investment
“Excel's returns prior to the Facebook fund weren't the best in the industry, and so some analyst types in the LP community were like, well, you know, should I stay in Excel or not?”
Lemkin: Half of the $184B invested in VC in 2025 went to four companies
“They're estimated in a hundred eighty four billion in venture capital invested this year by their definition. Okay. The peak was 20, 21 of a hundred eighty three billion. So one more billion this year. Okay. But four of those half of the hundred eighty four bi…”
Farquhar: Accel won Atlassian's initial round at $405M valuation
“And the valuations we got back varied between, there was one sort of high hundreds. There was three of them ended up in the two to three hundred million dollar range. And Excel, who ended up you know, winning for us came back at four hundred and five million U…”
Swartz: Revenue Multiples Are 3x to 5x Above Historical Peaks
“If you do a careful analysis of the multiples here in the marketplace, we're at three to five X where we've ever been in our lifetime, price to revenue of companies, three to five X where we were at the peak ever before.”
Swartz: Tech revenue multiples in 2021 are 3x to 5x historical peaks
“We're at three to five X where we've ever been in our lifetime in terms of price to revenue of companies, three to five X where we were at the peak ever before”
O'Driscoll: Accel likely generated a $2 billion gain on Scale AI
“If Alexander Wang's highest and best use is as a senior employee at Meta, then isn't it wonderful that the free market system was able to pay everyone else, fifteen billion dollars, all power to excel who probably booked a two billion dollar gain here.”
Patterson: Kleiner Perkins invested in Accel's $40M telecom fund in the 1980s
“Jim had made a really strategic move in about 83, 85, where we raised that XL-II was actually a focused telecom fund of a smaller size, but I think it was about forty million, and I think KP even invested in it.”
Stebbings: Accel and Sequoia raised $4B and $7B AI growth funds
“Excel adds four billion leaders fund to follow into hot AI growth rounds. Sequoia four days ago raises seven billion dollar growth round growth fund.”
Clements: Accel invested in CrowdStrike at $160M valuation with $1M ARR
“The example I would point to is, you know, CrowdStrike. Samir Gandhi and John Locke intersected CrowdStrike when it was, you know, there was like a million dollars of software revenue and there was a nine million dollar consulting business, and like, that was …”
Facebook Had Nine Employees When Accel Offered a $100 Million Valuation
“Facebook at this time was nine people. It was a nine person company. They were in a hundred different colleges and it was called the Facebook, not, it wasn't yet Facebook. And we met the day they got their term sheet from Excel you know, for the a hundred mill…”
De Rycker: Accel operates globally without a CEO or top-down structure
“The fact that that exists without a CEO, some top-down instrumentation, any kind of top-down structure just shows how frankly authentic it is because it has to endure.”
De Rycker: Accel backed Spotify at $70M revenue and 1.5M subscribers
“When we invested, it was sort of seventy-ish million in gross revenue. I mean, it's ten billion now. And It was about a million and a half paying users”
Gandhi: Accel invested in CrowdStrike at a $150M post-money valuation
“So I never looked at it as a three to five X. I looked at it as we're investing in a company, you know, in the first round when we did it was a 150 posts or something like that.”
11 of 13 Pear Launchpad Companies Raised Top 2016 Seed Rounds
“So, you know, last year we had about 13 companies 11 of them ended up raising a seed round from great people. Accel, first round, Index, just really, really top name people. And the other two went back to school.”
Soltero: Hyperic bootstrapped two years before Accel/Benchmark funding and $420M exit
“We ended up bootstrapping Hyperic actually for two years before we raised money ultimately from Excel and Benchmark who were great investors. And helped us take this thing to you know, ultimately a four hundred and twenty million dollar acquisition by VMware, …”
Clements: Public trillion-dollar market cap companies grew from zero to twelve
“A decade ago, there were zero companies worth a trillion dollars. Five years later, there were six public companies worth a trillion dollars. Today, there's a dozen companies worth a trillion dollars in the public market.”
Swartz: Software and communications were under 15% of 1980s VC
“You go back in that era, those two sectors were maybe 10 to 15% of the total investing that was going on at the”
Deliveroo raised over $1.7 billion prior to its 2021 IPO
“Prior to their IPO earlier this year, Will raised over 1.7 billion dollars for the company from some of the best in the business, including Excel, Index, General Catalyst, Green Oaks and more.”
Algolia raised a $53 million Series B led by Accel
“Just last week, he raised a whopping fifty-three million dollar Series B, led by Excel, with participation from Sasta, Des Trainer at Intercom, Jotty Bansal at AppDynamics, and Carl Valberg at Envision, including Prior Investors .9 Capital and Alvin.”
Kanji: Accel operates European venture funds exceeding $500 million each
“Axel's more than half a million, half a billion per fund, so 500 something plus Per fund.”
GM Pension Fund has invested in every Accel fund since Accel I
“GM had been an investor in venture funds since the late seventies. They're invested in Excel, for example, all the way on from Excel number one all the way on through.”