Accel

It's a company that has gone through a phenomenal growth trajectory.

At Temo, we're backed by two of the leading venture funds, Index Ventures and Accel Partners, and over 10 CEOs.

So we're fortunate that we have direct access to a lot of existing shareholders, including board members at some of the leading private companies where we are invested.

So access is a constraint and people are trying to engineer around access through swaps derivatives.

What it needs are more companies that can turn those ambitions into commercially viable products.

That's the word coming in from Accel's Prayank Swaroop, who was an early investor in Zetwork.

Now, Zetwork's journey from a manufacturing marketplace to a company with its own manufacturing capabilities could help create a new generation of entrepreneurs in the sector, Swaroop told us in an interview.

Much like how Flipkart and Freshworks helped inspire entrepreneurs in e-commerce and software, the expectation is that Zetwork could have a similar impact on manufacturing.

So that journey started, again, when I got involved in the business about six and a half, seven years ago.

And you went on to raise another round of capital from Accel, too.

Yeah, we brought Accel into the business about three, four years ago.

You know, at that point, we needed some capital.

We made a few very small tuck-in acquisitions.

But since then, we're fully cash flow positive, self-sustaining.

So, but yes, we wanted Accel about three or four years ago.

So with Commerce Tools, it has the origin and the company is technically headquartered in Germany, but Boston is where the leadership team is and a lot of the growth is happening.

It probably took about five years, not only to get the reviews, but then to get enough traffic, buyer traffic, and then to really be able to start making money.

But I remember to me, the turning point was 2017, Accel, you know, a very famous Silicon Valley VC firm, they'd also funded Facebook, but they called us all of a sudden and they said, "Wow, all our portfolio entrepreneurs, all the Accel entrepreneurs in their pitches to the Accel partners are starting to use their G2 reviews or G2 ratings." And first I didn't believe it.

You know, I was like, 'cause Tim, my co-founder, he got the inbound and I'm like, "Oh, the...

You know, some of these VCs just call everybody." I'm like, "Oh, Tim, they're probably not serious." You know, but then I had a friend, Kevin Efrusy, who's a partner there, and I called him.

This flywheel's starting to spin.

But it, it took us five years, I think, to get there.

When Accel invested, we were maybe at 5 million ARR.

Yeah, then all of a sudden we started doubling every year, and I think we grew to, you know, very quickly then grew to 50 million ARR, you know, by 2021, and that's when we became a unicorn.

AlphaSignal was one of many.

In May, the investment firm Accel led a $75 million round in Victor.

Two of Slack's co-founders invested too.

More than 2,000 organizations used Victor by then.

Phenomenal people.

We had Mike Volpi from Index, we had Jeff Jordan from Andreessen, we had Ping Li from Accel, David Liden from Costless.

And each board meeting was like a sermon of, like, how to build and run a company, and that in itself is mentorship whether or not, like, it's your mentor.

You're there and you're benefiting from their experience and learnings.

Yeah, I'll...

If you can deliver that, I will buy it." We raised our seed round from Accel Partners in 2017, and we were focused at that point of trying to unlock, like, this initial version of the product that would deliver value and allow us to expand.

And when we raised our A round from Greylock Partners, we weren't quite there yet.

We had some initial traction.

The, yeah, the founders are, are, are, are, uh, are not consistent, and then, uh, the, the seed investors either are not, right? It gets consolidated downstream, like the A and the B and the C, the folks that have the access and the money.

Um, you know, Andreessen and Thrive and Lightspeed and Sequoia and Accel, you know, those are the folks that end up doing...

But, uh, my point is, like, it's kind of like anybody's game, and so I think that's what's very similar.

Um, we're also building the firm in a similar way to how we started.

[chuckles]

Yeah.

Like, as a founder, like, you know, you want people behind you that are gonna trust you're gonna make the right decision, but, like, that are just, like, showing, like, constant help, right? And so, like, I introed to, um, Kleiner and Khosla and USV and Accel, and he was blown away.

Yeah.