Accel Partners Adds Rob Solomon As Venture Partner

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Accel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm focusing on early stage and growth equity investments, today announced the addition of Rob Solomon as Venture Partner. Most recently, he served as President & COO for Groupon responsible for sales, marketing, business development, operations & international as the company experienced rapid growth going from 100 employees to 6,000.

As Venture Partner, Rob will be evaluating early stage and growth equity opportunities with Accel. He will also play a major role in advising the firm's portfolio companies on a wide range of strategic and operational issues like product management, scaling infrastructure, business operations, and mergers and acquisitions. Accel Partners has been an early investor in leading consumer internet companies including Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Kayak, Prezi, Rovio (Angry Birds), Trulia, and Vox Media.

"Rob is a successful and proven executive and investor who adds tremendous value to our firm and we are excited to have him join us," said Accel Partner Andrew Braccia. "He has been at the helm of some of the most high profile consumer internet brands and has demonstrated a unique ability to inspire and lead teams through both rapid growth and challenging times."  

Solomon brings more than 18 years of experience as an investor and consumer technology executive to Accel. Prior to Groupon he was a Venture Partner at TCV and CEO of SideStep, the web's first real-time vertical search engine in the travel category. Under his leadership the company experienced a successful turnaround and merger with Kayak. Prior to SideStep, Solomon was a member of Yahoo!'s executive management team and served as Senior Vice President, Commerce.

"Accel has an excellent reputation for putting their portfolio companies at the center of everything that they do, and I believe that philosophy has been core to their success over the past 30 years," said  Solomon. "I'm very excited to be working along side the brightest investors and entrepreneurs around, to help identify and scale Internet technologies that will transform our world."

Over the course of his career, Solomon has served on a number of boards and currently sits on the board of directors for HomeAway (NASDAQ: AWAY), HighGear Media (Accel Partners and Greylock) and the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA.  Solomon holds a bachelor's in history from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Accel Background
Founded in 1983, and managing over $9.6 billion in capital, Accel Partners has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses.  Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, California, New York City, London, and Bangalore, as well as in China via its partnership with IDG-Accel.

Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful technology companies, many of which have defined their categories, including 99designs, Actuate, AdMob, Agile Software, Alfresco, Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, BBN, Bonobos, Braintree, Brightcove, Cloudera, ComScore, Diapers.com (Quidsi), Dropbox, Etsy, Exclusively.in, Facebook, Flipkart, Fusion-IO, Gameforge, GlamMedia, Groupon, Imperva, Infinera, Interwoven, IronPlanet, JBoss, Kayak, Lookout, Macromedia, metroPCS, MoPub, Myntra, OPOWER, Polycom/PictureTel, Playfish, Portal Software, QlikTech, Rapt, Real Networks, Redback, Responsys, Riverbed, Spotify, Squarespace, SunRun, Trulia, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, Wonga, XenSource and Zimbra.

For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/accel.

SOURCE Accel Partners