The common thread among the best companies comes from rare ingredients: great founders operating with hard-earned insights; insightful leaders with a passion for product and team development; teams with the will to build significant companies under any and all conditions. For an industry defined by perpetual change, these truths have been a constant over 40 years of early-stage investing at Accel.

There’s immense joy — and responsibility — to being the investor of record in those companies. We’ve seen time and again how mixing great entrepreneurs with the right amount of capital, in-the-trenches board work, and an unflinching optimism for what’s possible can together yield great things. We’re thankful for founders like those at Slack, Dropbox, Meta, Scale, Segment, Sentry, Monte Carlo, Headway, Ironclad, and many others, who partnered with us in their incipient stages to help bring their ideas to life. Those experiences are the lifeblood of our partnership, the stories that encourage us to dream big and always (always) opt for the patient, long-term view.

As it turns out, the common thread among strong venture firms comes from ingredients equally rare: passionate partners who are students of new markets; studied investors ready to move swiftly and with conviction; a confident team focused narrowly on the best, breakout technology businesses. As we round out our 40th year as a firm, we’ll build on our bedrock principles while staying nimble to the technology forces that shape our world. If we get it right, we earn the right to do the work we love for another 40 years. Now that’s dreaming big!

Today, we are announcing our latest US early-stage vehicle, Accel XVI, a $650m fund advancing our mission to be the initiating investor behind transformative, market-defining technology companies. Entrepreneurs everywhere are innovating across the largest parts of our global economy. Our hope is to be there with them from the start.

16 funds later, we’re just beginning. 

— The Partners at Accel