Accel’s Harry Nelis on KAYAK, IPO strategy, and the right founder-VC relationship

Accel partner Harry Nelis knows what it’s like to be in the founder seat. After graduating with a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Harry moved to Silicon Valley to work as an Engineer at Hewlett Packard before founding his own venture-backed software company. His experience as a founder showed him just how difficult it is to build a long-lasting company and develop a sticky customer base. It has also informed his founder-first approach to venture capital investing at Accel, one of the world’s most successful funds, having invested in Slack, Etsy, and Qualtrics to name a few. A strong believer in founders leading their own companies, Harry thinks of himself as a coach and advisor to world-class companies. In this episode of This Much I Know, Carlos sits down with Harry to dive into some of the biggest topics in VC. They discuss some of Harry’s most memorable investments, the evolution of the European VC landscape, and the changing attitudes towards IPOs among founders and investors. Links: Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com Harry nelis - https://twitter.com/hnelis Accel - https://twitter.com/Accel

Om Podcasten

This Much I Know is the podcast from Seedcamp, Europe’s seed fund. Tune into hear the inside story from startup founders, investors and leading tech voices: the people who’ve built businesses, scaled globally, failed fantastically and learnt massively. Seedcamp invests early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. Seedcamp provides the infrastructure to fast-track a founder’s vision and create value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support and a global network built upon a decade’s experience backing exceptional talent.