This is what James Breyer looked like when he worked at Accel Partners
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 10:41 am
James Breyer (left) and Michael Bloomberg at Harvard's commencement ceremony in 2014.
Experience in finance and understanding of the IT market attracted Breyer to try his hand at the investment business. However, after studying at Harvard, he faced a number of rejections. Large venture companies did not take a young specialist into their team. Breyer was rejected by both Kleiner and Sequoia Capital.
Luck smiled on him, and in 1987 he got a place on the Accel Partners team. The kuwait phone number list investment company invested in start-ups that did not yet have a name, and their prospects were unclear. Accel itself was also a start-up. It was founded just 4 years ago by Arthur Patterson and Jim Schwartz.
High-risk, and therefore potentially high-return, investments required a special approach. That’s why Accel had its own investment philosophy called “The Prepared Mind.” It was based on a quote from Louis Pasteur, the father of microbiology and vaccination: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” In investment parlance, that sounded like a suggestion to think long and hard before investing.
It was at Accel Partners that Breyer first learned about this strategy, which he later used in his own company, Breyer Capital. It is a strategy of deeply analyzing all factors that may affect the prospects of an investment before concluding a deal.
Among the successful projects Breyer worked on during this period were investments in companies such as Redback Networks, Foundry Networks, and Portal Software, all of which were subsequently sold to corporations at 100x returns for Accel Partners.
Eight years after joining the company, James Breyer became a managing partner of Accel Partners.
Investing in Facebook* and Pivoting to Asia
In 2005, Accel became the second largest investor in social networking site Facebook* with an investment of $12.2 million.
Experience in finance and understanding of the IT market attracted Breyer to try his hand at the investment business. However, after studying at Harvard, he faced a number of rejections. Large venture companies did not take a young specialist into their team. Breyer was rejected by both Kleiner and Sequoia Capital.
Luck smiled on him, and in 1987 he got a place on the Accel Partners team. The kuwait phone number list investment company invested in start-ups that did not yet have a name, and their prospects were unclear. Accel itself was also a start-up. It was founded just 4 years ago by Arthur Patterson and Jim Schwartz.
High-risk, and therefore potentially high-return, investments required a special approach. That’s why Accel had its own investment philosophy called “The Prepared Mind.” It was based on a quote from Louis Pasteur, the father of microbiology and vaccination: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” In investment parlance, that sounded like a suggestion to think long and hard before investing.
It was at Accel Partners that Breyer first learned about this strategy, which he later used in his own company, Breyer Capital. It is a strategy of deeply analyzing all factors that may affect the prospects of an investment before concluding a deal.
Among the successful projects Breyer worked on during this period were investments in companies such as Redback Networks, Foundry Networks, and Portal Software, all of which were subsequently sold to corporations at 100x returns for Accel Partners.
Eight years after joining the company, James Breyer became a managing partner of Accel Partners.
Investing in Facebook* and Pivoting to Asia
In 2005, Accel became the second largest investor in social networking site Facebook* with an investment of $12.2 million.