Spotlight On

1Password has been cash flow positive since day one, bootstrapping for 14 years before securing the largest Series A round in Accel’s history. What started as a personal project developed by two couples has grown into an identity security solution used by millions of individual consumers and their families and more than 150,000 businesses worldwide. In this episode of Spotlight On, CEO Jeff Shiner joins Accel’s Arun Mathew to discuss the company’s patient growth journey and how they balance the needs of vastly different customers in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

This conversation offers an open look into Jeff’s learnings over the last decade as CEO. Jeff joined 1Password early on when the company reached 20 employees to lead its next phase of growth. Under Jeff’s leadership, the team has scaled to over 1,200 employees and tactfully evolved their platform from a consumer mobile app to a comprehensive identity security solution for businesses of all sizes. The discussion emphasizes the importance of purpose behind every funding decision, his vision for the future of identity security, and the impact of AI on it all.

Conversation highlights:

00:00 – The founding of 1Password by two families 18 years ago

03:30 – The strategic shift from a consumer app to a B2B platform in response to changes in the SaaS and security landscapes

06:58 – Bootstrapping and the pivotal role of venture capital in attracting world-class talent

10:22 – Jeff’s journey to becoming CEO and the evolving role of the founder

29:15 – Insights on scaling and leading a remote-first, global team

31:55 – How 1Password has incorporated AI into its products, and its role in the future 

36:20 – The impact and importance of leadership on company culture

Featured: Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password and Arun Mathew, Partner at Accel

Today, Marc Lore is synonymous with eCommerce. He is known for translating his bold visions into trailblazing companies like Diapers.com and Jet.com. As a serial entrepreneur, there are consistencies in Marc’s companies: they were born out of his own needs and focused on how we consume goods. But perhaps most notably – they are ideas so daring that some would call him crazy.  

His latest endeavor, Wonder, is no different. 

In this episode of Spotlight On, Marc joins Accel’s Sameer Gandhi to reflect on their long-standing partnership and Marc’s bold yet methodical approach to company growth. They unpack Marc’s vision for Wonder to become an AI-powered personal chef and, along the way, share lessons for new and seasoned founders on stage-by-stage growth, scaling a team, and building investor trust. The conversation offers an open look into Marc’s ambition and unshakable belief in the importance of founder naïveté when challenging new markets that nobody believed could be disrupted before.

Conversation highlights:

00:00 – Recounting Marc’s and Sameer’s partnership over the years

04:00 – Marc’s early interest in entrepreneurship and atypical first investor

09:16 – Strategies for doubling the valuation of companies at each round 

12:11 – Advice for new entrepreneurs on the power of naïveté

14:43 – How Diapers.com transformed e-commerce by redefining customer expectations

24:12 – Overview of Wonder and how it is redesigning the food supply chain

30:59 - Marc’s rubric for growth and the necessity of capital burn

35:10 – How Marc’s approach to interviewing and building a team has evolved

45:50 – Marc’s reflection on how to gain an advantage in the early days of your career

Featured: Marc Lore, CEO of Wonder, and Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel

With any new technology, malicious actors exploit vulnerabilities and create uncertainty. But there are tools investigators, regulators, and cybersecurity professionals can use to fight back. In this episode, Chainalysis’ Jackie Burns Koven, Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence, shares how to mitigate risks and build trust in emerging spaces, drawing from her work across the cryptocurrency and blockchain landscape.

Since Chainalysis launched in 2014, the platform has been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile criminal cases and safely expand consumer access to cryptocurrency. Jackie joined Chainalysis in 2019 after serving as an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Department of Defense. In this conversation, she reflects on the crucial role Chainalysis plays in enhancing blockchain safety and ensuring its viability. She also offers valuable advice on how early-stage startups and leaders can stay informed in the rapidly evolving tech ecosystem, and how they can think about implementing their own systems.

The episode also explores the challenges new technologies like AI face from malicious actors, the importance of effective collaboration between technology and government agencies, and the steps needed to stabilize the crypto industry long-term.

Conversation highlights:

00:00 – Introduction to Chainalysis 

05:30 – Why Chainalysis is working with government agencies to fight bad actors 

14:00 – How the blockchain threat landscape is evolving with AI

16:30 – The role of education in rising crypto threats, like pig butchering

29:10 – Advice for staying up to date on the rapidly evolving technology ecosystem

31:34 – Building a Cyber Threat Intelligence team; Jackie’s role

Featured: Jackie Burns Koven, Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Chainalysis and Amit Kumar, Partner at Accel

In 2012, Netskope CEO and Founder Sanjay Beri was convinced that the security industry was on the brink of a massive transformation. Through countless conversations with CEOs, CIOs, and CISOs, he identified a significant shift towards the cloud, presenting a unique opportunity to redefine data network security for this new era. Thus, Netskope was born, starting small but with grand ambitions.

Netskope’s early days exemplify the power of a clear vision and controlled growth. They began with specific SaaS products and steadily expanded into a comprehensive platform. Today, Netskope serves over 3,400 customers, tens of millions of users, including over 30 of the Fortune 100. In this episode, Sanjay shares insights into their steady strategy, intentional fundraising, and evolution into an industry-leading security platform. He also reflects on over a decade of leadership and people management, offering valuable lessons about team evolution as the company scales.

Conversation highlights:

00:00 – Sanjay’s background at Juniper Networks and interest in entrepreneurship

03:23 – The reasons behind Netskope’s early focus on SaaS products

04:14 – How Netskope approached fundraising with a focus on relationships and differentiation

11:00 – Netskope’s shift from products to platform

15:30 – Learnings from over a decade of leadership and people management

25:00 – A new approach to startup innovation; from product to GTM to marketing

27:10 – Why Netskope incorporated AI into their platform from the early days

35:00 – Reflections on how the ecosystem has evolved since 2012

Alex Bovee sees three critical ingredients to building a high-growth startup: a founding team with innate grit for entrepreneurship, a good idea, and great timing. ConductorOne has all three. In this episode of Spotlight On, Alex shares his founding journey and encourages entrepreneurs to focus on building unique solutions that address unmet market needs.

ConductorOne is an access control solution that helps companies secure identity across their cloud and on-premises apps and infrastructure. In 2020, Alex joined Accel as an Entrepreneur in Residence (and was our first virtual EIR, for obvious reasons) before we partnered for their Seed later that year. The episode covers the founding story, identity market, ConductorOne’s unique approach to building a company out of Portland, Oregon, and the advantages of getting a startup team together in the same room. Alex also discusses the challenges faced during the early iteration phases, the importance of timing, and the inspiration that can be found in competing against large incumbents.

Conversation highlights:

00:00 – Alex’s background and early interest in entrepreneurship

04:51 – Identifying current gaps in the access control experience

07:44 – Complementary skillsets that make startup founders successful

08:50 – Transitioning from COVID to an in-person culture in Portland, Oregon

17:00 – Early iteration phase challenges

19:00 – Finding inspiration as an underdog competing against large incumbents

25:18 – Takeaways from RSA 2024 and the biggest trends in security, AI, and identity

In 2018, Barr Moses was looking to start a company but wasn't sure which idea to pursue. She decided to work on three different startup ideas in parallel to see which one gained the most traction with customers.

One of those ideas was Monte Carlo, a solution to address the challenges around data reliability that Barr had experienced throughout her career— dealing with broken data products, wasted time, lost trust, and firefighting data quality issues. As Barr met with potential customers, it became clear that there was significant demand from technical leaders grappling with the consequences of data downtime across their organizations. 

Today, Monte Carlo has successfully created a new category and firmly established itself as the end-to-end data observability platform for companies like Cisco, Fox, American Airlines, and more. Now, in the era of AI, the role of data quality has never been more critical. 

In this episode of Spotlight On, Barr and Accel’s Steve Loughlin reflect on Monte Carlo’s unique origin story, explain “Hell Yeah Moments” as a company success metric, and dig into why they chose speed, focus, and customer impact as core values. Barr also peels the curtain back on why she decided to launch the company alongside an entirely new category—Data Observability—and the grit and determination it takes to build and sell a product that’s never been built or sold before. There’s no playbook for that, but Monte Carlo created its own.

Conversation Highlights:

Featured: Barr Moses, Co-Founder and CEO at Monte Carlo, and Steve Loughlin, Partner at Accel.

Learn more about Accel’s relationship with Monte Carlo:

In a landscape dominated by incumbent players, Gamma takes a bold approach: instead of trying to be better than the existing players, they aim to be an entirely different tech company. They've reimagined the very essence of presentation tools and the creative possibilities they offer. In this episode of Spotlight On, Gamma’s Co-Founder, Jon Noronha, delves into the team’s journey, from an early acquisition at a former startup to somewhat coincidentally building a product that dovetails perfectly with AI. He also unpacks the challenges and opportunities early-stage companies face navigating today’s landscape.

While still in the early innings, Gamma’s journey underscores the importance of staying nimble and ahead of the curve. They’ve learned to anticipate and adapt to advancements in AI models and how to prevent the common (yet often surprising!) misuse of artificial intelligence products. On the heels of their Series A round, the discussion offers advice for early-stage startup founders on overcoming hurdles in aligning a product with market needs, fundraising in different economic climates, and more.

Conversation Highlights:

00:00 - Introduction to Gamma

03:10 - The foundations Gamma had in place to take advantage of the AI wave

08:42 - Structuring early-stage teams to leverage AI UX designers

14:31 - Outpacing powerful incumbents by embracing uniqueness to earn market share

23:02 - Building an AI company with customer data sensitivity in mind

30:02 - Overcoming challenges of fundraising during boom times

32:08 - Reflecting on the importance of a lean early-stage team

Featured: Jon Noronha, Co-Founder at Gamma, and Vas Natarajan, Partner at Accel

Since joining forces in 2019 to tackle the complexities of global employment, founders Marcelo Lebre and Job van der Voort navigated their startup, Remote, and its customers through a series of challenges: a global pandemic, the rapid emergence of distributed workforces, and subsequent economic volatility. In this episode of Spotlight On, Marcelo and Accel’s Miles Clements discuss the effectiveness of global remote team structures despite obstacles.

Marcelo has taken no shortcuts in understanding the nuances that come with operating a distributed workforce himself, operating Remote’s $3B business with a team in 75+ countries worldwide. This episode provides essential insights for founders on the importance of deeply understanding the problems they aim to solve and, of course, presents a convincing argument for the sustainability of remote work. As debates continue around the effectiveness of remote work, and its pros and cons, Marcelo and his team focus on helping others consider the benefits of a well-considered, long-term strategy for supporting durable, globally distributed teams.

Conversation Highlights: 

00:00 - Introduction to Marcelo Lebre and Remote

02:46 - Discovering early challenges in hiring global, distributed teams

07:09 - Lessons from scaling a startup like Remote during the uncertainty of COVID-19

12:29 - Data that supports the enduring trend of a global, distributed workforce

15:26 - Economic advantages of hiring talent globally

18:13 - Advantages of building a full-stack product in a competitive market

24:10 - Remote’s thoughtful, methodical approach to understanding global markets 

Featured: Marcelo Lebre, Co-Founder at Remote, and Miles Clements, Partner at Accel

No founder's journey is a straight line. In the throes of ups and downs, having guidance from someone who understands your experience can be invaluable. In this special episode of Spotlight On, Accel’s Amit Kumar and Ivan Zhou discuss their shared founder journeys and transition into VC, and dive into how they worked together to steer Ivan’s startup, Mayhem, through its most challenging times.

Mayhem (formerly Visor) was a social gaming platform that joined Accel Family in 2018 and was acquired by Niantic in 2021. In April, Ivan joined Accel as an early-stage partner, mirroring Amit’s founder-partner journey. Their discussion explores the resilience needed to navigate turbulent times, a central theme in their founder experiences. This episode unpacks some of the most critical qualities of early-stage founders and operators – the determination to solve real problems, the importance of establishing strong foundations, and the willingness to rethink strategies when things don’t go according to plan.

Conversation highlights: 

00:00 - Ivan’s background and first startup attempt

04:44 - Uncovering the problem and passion that would inspire Mayhem 

07:25 - What Ivan and Amit were looking for in an early-stage VC partnership

11:40 - The importance of building a company around a problem, not a category

18:09 - Lessons learned in a pivotal moment when Mayhem nearly failed

21:16 - How adversity as a founder helped both Amit and Ivan become better partners

30:50 - Ivan’s discovery of his passion for supporting other founders

39:17 - The core verticals and traits Ivan is looking for in future founders

Featured: Ivan Zhou and Amit Kumar, Partners at Accel

Since its inception in 2011, CrowdStrike has had a profound impact on the security landscape. Yet, despite their wildly successful 2019 IPO, there is no finish line for CEO and Co-Founder George Kurtz. With each passing year, the company grows larger, the market opportunities expand, and the need to prevent breaches becomes even more critical. 

In this episode of Spotlight On, George and Accel’s Sameer Gandhi reflect on how their shared vision for a full suite of security solutions on a single platform, which kickstarted the partnership in 2013, has become a reality. As CrowdStrike approaches the 5th anniversary of its IPO, boasting a market cap of $72 billion, George reflects on the company’s enduring success. He shares his learnings as a second-time founder, detailing how he structures his investors and his board, and how his unwavering focus on solving the hard problems first continues to guide the company today.  

Conversation highlights: 

00:00 - Recounting the first meeting between George and Accel, which, against all odds, kickstarted a successful partnership 

11:34 - How George held onto conviction for an unconventional approach to security 

16:41 - Advice for founders operating in highly competitive landscapes

30:19 - Building an effective board of directors 

33:00 - The importance of retaining the agility of a startup, even as a scaled business

38:01 - Parallels between racing and leading a business: time, data, team, and detail

44:40 - Considerations for the impact of AI and dark LLMs across the security landscape

51:05 - How George reinforced his commitment to customers post-IPO

Featured: George Kurtz, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of CrowdStrike, and Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel