Accel

“One of the things that we’ve learnt over the years, is that venture is a people business. And what makes great companies is the entrepreneurs behind them. I think we continue to have a really steady flow of great entrepreneurs emerging.” Harry Nelis and Financial Times' Tim Bradshaw sit down to discuss the biggest lessons learnt as Accel marks its 25th anniversary in Europe.

Arkady Volozh's story is remarkable: he spent nearly three decades building Yandex– valued at $30 billion at its peak – before divesting the company’s Russian assets and pivoting the remaining company into AI infrastructure. Now, he’s building Nebius. Nebius is unique among companies that call themselves startups. As it currently exists, it is less than a year old; it’s also listed on NASDAQ as a publicly traded company. Nebius's hundreds of engineers have spent years working together building out digital infrastructure, but have been rapidly redeployed to focus on what Arkady has determined is the next generational opportunity: the cloud infrastructure needed to drive the AI transformation. On this episode of Spotlight On, Matt Weigand sat down with Arkady to talk about: ?? The journey to Nebius ?? What he’s learned about building teams and infrastructure ?? What’s to come for the prolific founder. The latest episode is live here: https://lnkd.in/e7N7Gket

At the heart of Nebius's unique story is our heritage and the vision of our founder, Arkady Volozh. In the latest edition of Accel's "Spotlight On..." podcast hosted by Matt Weigand – the Accel partner who led the storied VC firm's investment in Nebius last year – Arkady talks in depth about what makes Nebius unique, his experience as a founder of multiple successful tech companies, and the best thing he's read recently. Thanks to Matt and the Accel team for the fascinating discussion. Watch the podcast here ?? https://lnkd.in/eauMVMVq

Ask any founder: when you're building a startup, mistakes are inevitable. Tailscale founder Avery Pennarun tells us success isn't about avoiding mistakes; it's about making them cheaply and quickly. Avery is a two-time founder and a fount of wisdom on how to build companies. We loved the conversation he had with Amit Kumar on our latest episode of Spotlight On (link below).

ICYMI Accel Partner Ben Quazzo joins Caroline Hyde and Jackie Davalos on Bloomberg to discuss our recent investment in Speak and why we believe AI is transforming audio and language learning, as well as our overall optimism about consumer AI. https://lnkd.in/gZGiRn9S

The internet isn’t working the way we were promised it would. ???? Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun recently joined Accel’s Spotlight On podcast to discuss why the Internet’s underlying protocols make security more complicated than it needs to be—and how Tailscale is fixing that. As Avery puts it, Tailscale makes the internet work the way it’s supposed to by securely connecting devices, applications, and users—no matter where they are. In this conversation with Accel partner Amit Kumar, Avery shares his insights on building a simpler, more secure internet Check out the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gegPYTYD or see below for a snippet! #Tailscale #Networking #Security #Podcast #StartupLessons

One of the first questions I asked Avery Pennarun when getting to know him was why he named his company Tailscale. I loved his answer and the insight that that most engineers overbuild and plan for "google scale" when very few of us actually need to introduce that much complexity into our systems. I was definitely guilty of this at CardSpring and Betable. His callback to how the internet used to be - secure, intimate, private, and yes quirky - is what drives Avery and the team in all of their decisions. They are working on building the new internet, or maybe recreating the old internet for the new world. Check out entire our entire chat in the latest episode of Accel's Spotlight On: https://lnkd.in/dfVeE2Ue

What's Avery Pennarun into? - Electric tractors - ?? ? - Gong - "Crossing the Chasm" He shares what he's learned from "Crossing the Chasm" and building Tailscale in our latest episode of Spotlight On with Amit Kumar. Check out the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eZTSvrsx

When we first partnered with Yotam Segev, Tamar Bar-Ilan, and the Cyera team for their Series A, it was clear they had identified a critical threat facing enterprises: securing vital business and customer data in an increasingly complex world. #Cloud migration, #data proliferation, and emerging technologies like #GenAI were creating countless data-related #security challenges for businesses, yet there was no true platform to manage vulnerabilities at scale. Today, just two years and three more investment rounds later, Cyera has redefined the data security market and become the fastest-growing data security company in history thanks to its real-time, AI-driven data protection platform. We're thrilled to support the team on their continued journey - congratulations team Cyera! cc: Arun Mathew Philippe Botteri

?? Cyera Just Broke A World Record To Become the Fastest-Growing Data Security Company in History In just two years, Cyera redefined the data security market: ? 26x revenue growth ?? ? 6x valuation increase in 2024 alone—now at $3B ? 21x customer growth, with nearly 10% of the Fortune 500 choosing Cyera just this year alone! ? Acquired Trail Security (acquired by Cyera), creating the industry's first unified data security company As AI reshapes security, organizations need real-time, AI-driven data protection. That’s why the world’s leading companies trust Cyera to secure their most valuable asset—data. Read more from our CEO, Yotam Segev, about how we got here and what’s next: https://lnkd.in/gFg-EKXK #DataSecurity #CISO #Cyera #Cybersecurity #DataBreach #AI