ACCEL - Key Persons
Abhinav Chaturvedi joined Accel in 2012 and focuses on consumer, fintech and saas investments.
Abhinav has led investments in Acko (new age digital insurance), Ally (business performance management), Drip Capital (global trade-finance), Stanza Living (student housing platform), UrbanCompany (local services marketplace), and other seed/early-stage businesses.
Prior to joining Accel, Abhinav held engineering and product management positions at Amazon.com where he built online payment systems.
Abhinav holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.
Adrian Colyer joined Accel in 2015 and has been involved in open-source infrastructure companies for more than 20 years, having previously held CTO roles with SpringSource, VMware, and Pivotal.
As a venture partner, Adrian works with software-based companies across Europe and is a board member or observer for Snyk, Skipjaq, and Weaveworks. Adrian is from London.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Venture Development
Alok Bathija has recently joined Accel as a Partner leading Corporate Development in India. In his role, he will be helping our portfolio companies reach their financial and strategic goals by leveraging his global investor and corporate relationships to raise capital and drive strategic alliances.
Prior to joining Accel, Alok spent 15 years at UBS in the New York and Mumbai offices, advising global institutions investing in India. He has also been a part of multiple large deals in the Indian TMT space.
Alok has an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Aman joined Accel in 2022 as a member of the Investment team, focusing on early-stage ventures.
Amit Jhunjhunwala joined Accel in 2015 and leads the finance organization at the India office.
As CFO Amit is responsible for financial reporting of Accel India funds, as well as day-to-day management of operations, accounting, and tax matters. Amit also works with portfolio companies to address specific financial reporting and tax-related matters.
Prior to joining Accel, Amit was a senior manager at KPMG (India), where he provided auditing, accounting advisory, and internal control-related services to large global businesses. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
Amit grew up in Kolkata, India, and graduated from Calcutta University.
Amy Saper joined Accel in 2019 and focuses on companies building delightful user experiences that target consumers, businesses, and developers.
Amy led Accel's investments in Gamma and Sprinter Health, and she works closely with the teams at Gem, Middesk, Deserve, and Radar.
Previously, Amy spent time at Stripe. As the second marketing hire, she helped build and grow the Product Marketing team, leading global product launches across Stripe's suite of products. Prior to Stripe, Amy launched products and countries at Twitter, as she helped the company scale from a pre-revenue startup to a public company over the course of four years.
Prior to Accel, Amy was also an active angel investor, investing in and advising early stage companies in industries including e-commerce, health and wellness, and SaaS.
Originally from Palo Alto, California, Amy graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Anand Daniel is from Chennai and joined Accel in 2010.
At Accel, Anand focuses on investments in consumer technology, online marketplaces, and healthcare technology. He has led investments in BlackBuck, Bounce, Emeritus, Forus, Koo, MyGlamm, Niyo, Rupeek, SenseHQ, Spinny, Swiggy, TaxiForSure (acquired by Ola), Vedantu, Zolve, and other early-stage companies.
Anand holds an MBA from MIT, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue, and a BE in Computer Science from the University of Madras.
Andrew Braccia joined Accel in 2007 and focuses on consumer-oriented mobile and web services companies.
He was an early investor and on the boards of Slack (public), lynda.com (acquired by LinkedIn), Squarespace (public), Vox Media, Cornershop (acquired by Uber), MyFitnessPal (acquired by Under Armour), Hotel Tonight (acquired by Airbnb), Cloudera (public), Anchor.fm (acquired by Spotify), Gametime, UserTesting (public), and Lydia. He also works closely with the teams at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), Etsy (public), Xero (public), and PagerDuty (public).
Prior to joining Accel, Andrew spent close to a decade in a variety of executive positions at Yahoo!.
Andrew is from Santa Rosa, California and graduated from the University of Arizona.
Anne Rockhold joined Accel in 2010 and serves as Accel's chief financial officer.
Anne has over 20 years of venture capital finance and administrative experience, and is passionate about building great teams and systems. Prior to Accel, she was chief financial officer at SVB Capital and Vanguard Ventures. She is a past chairman and board member of VCBC, a past board member and treasurer of the NVCA and is an active member of the NVCA's CFO task force.
Before joining the venture world, Anne served as chief financial officer for Pacific Specialty Insurance Company and the American Basketball League. She held senior financial positions at Ross Systems and Interlink Computer Sciences where she was actively involved in their initial public offerings, as well as multiple private financings and acquisitions.
Anne taught graduate accounting courses at the University of California, Berkeley Extension program and earned her CPA designation while at Ernst & Young, where she worked in both the audit and tax departments.
Anne is from San Diego and graduated from UCLA.
Job Titles:
- SaaS - Based CMS and Hosting Service
Arthur Patterson founded Accel with Jim Swartz in 1983.
As the lead investor, Arthur has helped management teams develop companies into market-defining leaders for over four decades.
Arthur served as the President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and as a Director of the National Venture Capital Association, receiving their ‘22 Lifetime Achievement Award (Remarks).
Arun Mathew joined Accel in 2009 and leads growth investments in the enterprise, security, and infrastructure markets.
Arun works closely with 1Password, BetterCloud, Dealer.com (acquired by DealerTrack), Dovetail, ForgeRock (FORG), G2, PagerDuty, Qualtrics (acquired by SAP), ServiceChannel (acq by FTV), Squarespace, Tenable (TENB), Webflow, and XebiaLabs (acq by TPG). Arun also leads the firm's Tech Council initiatives and spends time in India, where he is active with Accel's investments in Flipkart, BookMyShow, Ola, and Freshworks (FRSH).
Arun is from Nashville, Tennessee and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Barath Shankar Subramanian joined Accel in 2012 and is a Partner.
He has been in the healthcare domain for over a decade, having previously been a senior consultant at Frost & Sullivan where he covered the healthcare and life sciences domains across North America, Europe, and Asia.
As a part of the investment team at Accel, Barath is on the board or actively works with management teams at Axio, Consure, Medigo, Onco.com, PharmaCCX, Portea, SigTuple, and other early-stage companies.
Barath grew up in Madurai and has a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy from BITS, Pilani and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ben Fletcher joined Accel in 2016 and focuses on software, internet services, and mobile technology companies.
Since joining Accel, Ben has helped source and lead Accel's investments in Ada, BetterCloud, BrowserStack, Checkr, Galileo, Guru, Jellyfish, MessageBird, Opal, Podium, Webflow, World View, and UnitQ.
Prior to Accel, Ben worked on Google's corporate development team, where he helped manage mergers, acquisitions, and investments. At Google, Ben led numerous transactions in a number of different verticals including, communications, collaboration software, vertical software, robotics, and developer tools. Prior to Google, Ben worked in finance and partnerships at Apple.
Ben is from Vienna, Virginia and graduated from Brigham Young University.
Ben Quazzo joined Accel in 2014 and focuses on enterprise application and consumer tech companies. Ben helped source and lead Accel's investments in G2, goPuff, Guru, Process.st, Simility, UiPath, Webflow.
Prior to Accel, Ben worked for Voxy, a New York City-based education technology startup that provides personalized English language learning courses to educational institutions and corporations.
He is from Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Princeton.
Job Titles:
- in 2020 As Communications Manager
Brianna joined Accel in 2020 as Communications Manager. She supports Accel's communications efforts, while also providing strategic guidance to portfolio companies and their Marketing/PR teams.
Bruce Golden joined Accel in 1997 and focuses on enterprise software with a particular interest in security, cloud infrastructure, fintech, marketing tech and data management companies.
Bruce led Accel's investments in Amitree, Amobee (acquired by SingTel), Ajuba Solutions (acquired by Interwoven), Causata (acquired by Nice Systems), comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), Dapper (acquired by YAHOO), eCommerce Industries (acquired by Insight Partners), Exchange.com (acquired by Amazon), Forgerock, Itemfield (acquired by Informatica), Moshi, Offermatica (acquired by Omniture), OpenGamma, Qlik (NASDAQ: QLIK), Qubit, Responsys (NASDAQ: MKTG, acquired by Oracle), Skipjaq (acquired by SkyScanner), Support.com (NASDAQ: SPRT), and Streambase (acquired by TIBCO).
Prior to Accel, Bruce was an entrepreneur and operating executive at Lucasfilm, Sun Microsystems, and Illustra Information Technologies.
Bruce is from Chicago and graduated from Columbia and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Job Titles:
- Enterprise Software Platform for Business Communication
Carlo Giovanni Biggio focuses on Cloud, Fintech and Security businesses.
Prior to joining Accel, Carlo was with Anthemis and Rocket Internet, focusing on early-stage European startups.
Carlo is from Cagliari, Italy and graduated from Bocconi University and the Rotterdam School of Management.
Casey Aylward joined Accel in 2022 and focuses on early-stage investments in cloud-native infrastructure, open-source software, and security companies.
Prior to joining Accel, Casey worked at Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage enterprise fund, where she led and incubated several investments in developer tools, data infrastructure, and security.
Before investing, Casey was a software engineer at Pinterest where she worked on commerce, collaboration, and core products. Casey joined Pinterest via an acquisition of a former Accel portfolio company, URX, where she was also a software engineer.
Casey graduated from Dartmouth College and is from Palm Beach, FL.
Job Titles:
- Consumer / Enterprise IT / Fintech
Charlie Serota joined Accel in 2021 and focuses on fintech, enterprise software, and consumer businesses.
Prior to Accel, Charlie was an investor on General Atlantic's technology team in London focused on marketplace and software businesses. Prior to relocating to London, Charlie was based in New York as an Associate Director at IAC and previously as an analyst at H/2 Capital Partners.
Charlie is originally from Chicago and graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Chloe Palmer joined Accel's team in London in December 2020 and is VP, People.
Prior to Accel, Chloe was the HR and Operations Director at Secret Escapes, a flash sale luxury travel company. At Secret Escapes, Chloe led a team of 100 people covering the global HR and Operations agenda and supported the scaling of the business to more than 1000 employees in 22 markets. Prior to Secret Escapes, Chloe held various HR roles at Nestlé and Barclays.
Chloe graduated from The University of Bristol and has a Masters in Human Resource Management.
Christine Esserman joined Accel in 2017 and focused on software, internet, and mobile technology companies. Since joining Accel, Christine has helped source and lead Accel's investments in Bumble, Dovetail, Ethos, Guru, Headway, Remote, and ThreeFlow
Prior to Accel, Christine worked in product and operations roles at a number of startups. Christine is from the Bay Area and graduated from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in finance and operations.
Job Titles:
- Support for the Kubernetes Ecosystem
Cynthia Leung joined Accel in 2001 and as Accel's controller is responsible for financial reporting, tax planning/reporting and the day-to-day management of operations and accounting matters.
Before joining Accel, Cynthia was a senior financial analyst in the Professional Services division at Lucent Technologies, where she was responsible for various finance functions including budgeting, planning and reporting. She has also led finance roles for two Bay Area startups and a marketing and design firm in Maryland.
Cynthia graduated from University of Maryland with a BS in Accounting.
Deeksha Bhandari joined Accel in 2017 and leads Accel's talent efforts - focused on helping entrepreneurs find the right talent, building an executive network of top talent, and providing strategic advice on assessing, hiring, and retaining the best executive talent.
Prior to Accel, Deeksha has held many different roles, all centered around the importance of relationship-building and connecting talent to opportunities.
Deeksha graduated from the London School of Economics and holds an undergraduate degree in Economics & Psychology from Mount Carmel College, Bangalore.
Job Titles:
- Customer Communication Platform for Businesses
Dinesh Katiyar joined Accel in 2011, and is based out of Silicon Valley.
Dinesh focuses on early-stage enterprise companies pursuing global market opportunities. His investments include Delightree, Entytle, Mindtickle, Simility, and Zinier.
Dinesh has been involved in several entrepreneurial pursuits in Silicon Valley. He was a founder at iLeverage (acquired by E.piphany), and SayNow (acquired by Google).
Dinesh grew up in Mumbai, India. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur.
Donnie Clay joined Accel in 2018 and serves as Accel's associate general counsel.
He provides guidance to the Accel team on investments, exits and fund structuring, and serves as counsel to the firm globally.
Prior to joining Accel, Donnie worked with Gunderson Dettmer, a leading Silicon Valley law firm, where he represented emerging companies and venture capital firms in general corporate matters and investments, and with Skadden Arps, a leading global law firm, where he represented a variety of companies in mergers and acquisitions.
Donnie was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Email Marketing and SMS Marketing Platform for ECommerce
Emily Chao joined Accel in 2022 and focuses on enterprise software and consumer businesses.
Prior to Accel, Emily was a part of Morgan Stanley's technology investment banking group in Menlo Park.
Emily is from Palos Verdes, CA and graduated from Stanford with a degree in Management Science and Engineering.
Eric Wolford joined Accel in 2014 and focuses on enterprise infrastructure companies.
He leverages his infrastructure and IT experience in working with founders across the enterprise stack, from next-gen analytics platforms like Jut, to emerging cloud security and threat detection companies like Netskope and Vectra. Eric also co-leads the Accel Tech Council.
Prior to Accel, Eric spent years in a variety of product and management roles at FastForward Networks, Inktomi and most recently, at Riverbed where he was president of the products group. There, he oversaw the growth of Riverbed's flagship WAN optimization and app acceleration platforms, which grew to be a $1 billion+ business.
Eric is from the Bay Area, graduated from Pepperdine, and has an MBA from NYU.
Ethan Choi joined Accel in 2018 and invests in SaaS companies that are redefining collaboration and enterprise automation, as well as fintech and e-commerce infrastructure.
He represents Accel on the boards of 1Password, Invoca, Klaviyo, Nuvemshop, Pismo, Pluang, and Shogun. He also works with Bird and commercetools.
Prior to Accel, Ethan invested in and worked with companies including Headspace, Jimdo, Lucid Software, Lynda.com, PicMonkey and Prezi.
Ethan is from Sydney, Australia and graduated from Brigham Young University.
Job Titles:
- Blockchain Analytics Platform
Job Titles:
- Enterprise Marketing Collaboration Platform
Prior to Accel, Gonzalo was a Vice President at super{set}, a venture studio led by former Accel founders, where he helped found and operate enterprise software companies. Before super{set}, Gonzalo worked at Bain and Company in their Private Equity and Technology practices.
Job Titles:
- Cloud Accounting Software
Harry Nelis joined Accel in 2004 and focuses on software, fintech and consumer internet companies.
Harry led Accel's investments in Carto, KAYAK (NASDAQ: KYAK; acquired by Booking.com), Showroomprive (EPA: SRP), Funding Circle (LON: FCH), Callsign, Celonis, CHECK24, Instana (acquired by IBM), Miro, Taxdoo and Zepz.
Harry started his career in Silicon Valley as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard before founding a venture-backed software company.
Harry is from the Netherlands and graduated from Harvard Business School and Delft University of Technology.
Job Titles:
- Integrated Governance, Risk and Compliance Management
Job Titles:
- Online Grocery Delivery Platform
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- NextG Networks / Series a / 2009
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- Managed Marketplace for Mental Health Professionals
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- Publisher and Developer of Free - to - Play, Massively Multiplayer Online Games ( MMOs )
Job Titles:
- Consumer / Fintech / Services
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- Revenue Strategy Platform for Hospitality
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- Production Identity for Developers
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- Marketing Services Platform
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- Personal Finance Platform
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- Knowledge Management Software
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- HR Management and Recruiting
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- Enterprise Middleware Platform
Job Titles:
- SaaS - Based Conversion Rate Optimization
Job Titles:
- All - in - One Recruiting Platform
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- Asset Intelligence Platform
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- Data Management and Analytics Platform
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- Investment Advisory and Portfolio Management Platform
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- Digital Insurance Platform
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- Compensation Management Platform