As it approaches its 35th year in the venture capital business, Accel is staying true to its promise to continue passing the torch to the younger generation of investors.
This week, the firm brought on Maya Noeth as a principal leading its consumer growth investing efforts. Accel typically promotes from within; Noeth is its first outside hire since Amit Kumar joined over two years ago.
Noeth has an impressive track record. She’s spent the last nine years at TCV, most recently as a vice president of its B2C group, where she invested in Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix and Spotify, as well as Airbnb, Rent The Runway, Rover and VICE Media.
At Accel, she’ll be writing checks sized between $30 million and $100 million in growth-stage startups focused on digital and social media, subscription e-commerce, gaming and vertical marketing. Noeth and the rest of Accel’s growth team are pulling capital out of the firm’s fourth flagship growth fund, which closed on $1.5 billion in 2016.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Noeth explained what she’s looking for in a B2C company.
“At a high-level, whenever I meet a new company, I’m interested in how big and attractive the market size is, who the team leading it is — execution is one of the most important attributes of a business — does the businesses have a great product that is differentiated with great competitive moats, what is the revenue model, what is the financial profile and is it really good unit economics?”
As a new mom, Noeth says she is especially interested in identifying companies in the kids-focused digital media sector.
“I think a lot of people are scratching their heads wondering what is there beyond YouTube Kids,” she said. “There is potential for really disruptive businesses to take over.”
Before joining TCV in late 2009 at the age of 23, Noeth began her career at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst specializing in the technology, media and telecom vertical.
Accel invests in companies at all stages, counting Spotify, Jet and Etsy among its investments. The firm’s recent exits include cybersecurity company Tenable’s summer IPO, Flipkart’s momentous sale to Walmart and Amazon’s nearly $1 billion purchase of PillPack, an online pharmacy startup Accel first backed in 2014.
Accel currently has 11 partners and five principals in the U.S. writing checks. According to PitchBook, it has $10.8 billion of assets under management.
Source: TechCrunch
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