Spotlight On

In the past two decades, the number of software tools the B2B buyer can shop between has exploded. While that abundance has made it more likely that a buyer can find a tool that solves their problem, it also complicates the buying journey. Discovering and vetting the right tools is a job in and of itself.  Godard Abel founded G2 to simplify that process. He knew firsthand from his experience found...

Think about how you learned your native language: trying out words, listening to your parents, speaking small fragments, until one day you were talking. Now, think about how you were taught languages in school – the grammar, the emphasis on writing and reading first – and it becomes clear why so few students achieve fluency in a second language.  Enter Speak . The language learning app uses conver...

Nebius is unique among companies that call themselves startups. As it currently exists, is less than a year old; it’s also listed on NASDAQ as a publicly traded company with billions in cash on the balance sheet. Its hundreds of engineers have worked together for years building out digital infrastructure, but have been rapidly redeployed to focus on what founder Arkady Volozh has determined is the...

One thing we like about working with repeat founders is that they’re decisive about how they do and do not want to build their company. Take Avery Pennarun, CEO of Tailscale . Even before he knew what Tailscale would be, he knew he wanted to: build products as simply as possible, avoid selling software only at the enterprise level, focus on winning small segments before expanding, and not waste ti...

How do you win in a market where everyone’s building at the same time? According to Decagon Co-founder and CEO Jesse Zhang , it’s all about focus and pace. We’re willing to take his word for it: in just two years, he and his team have built a leader in the enterprise agentic AI market, with a valuation of $650 million and already trusted by customers like Notion, Webflow, Substack, and Duolingo. I...

If you’ve ever been to a Laracon , you’d be mistaken for thinking you’d just walked into a music festival, not a PHP framework conference. Taylor Otwell founded Laravel in his native Little Rock, Arkansas, and has spent most of the past 14 years bootstrapping a company known for building exceptional product experiences alongside a community of over 1 million people. On this episode of Spotlight On...

Welcome back to Season 3 of Spotlight On! This season, we’re digging into the parts of founding and building companies that people don’t often see: the firsts, the crucible moments, and the key decision points that come after that initial founding phase.  Great companies are built one decision at a time, so we’re asking the people doing the building: How do you make the decisions that matter? What...

Welcome to Season 3 of Spotlight On: a podcast about how companies are built, from the people doing the building. When we talk about startups, we talk a lot about the big milestones: founding, funding, and going public. We talk less about what happens in between: the firsts, the mistakes, and the messy, exhilarating decisions the people building these companies have to make every day. This is a po...

David Cramer, co-founder and CPO of Sentry, joins host Dan Levine to share the unconventional journey of turning an Open Source side project into a $100 million ARR business now valued at over $3 billion.  From his early days as a teenage gamer to becoming a key player in the Django community, David recounts how a simple error-logging tool evolved into an essential platform used by over 100,000 or...

Most Y Combinator graduates and Forbes’ Top 50 AI companies use Linear’s project management suite to build their software. It's no accident that this purpose-built tool is beloved by engineers for its quality and ease of use. But, the company’s path to success hasn’t followed the same hyper-growth playbook its founders experienced in their previous roles at Airbnb, Uber, and Coinbase—and that’s en...

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...

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,...

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 block...

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. Nets...

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...

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, wa...

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 ear...

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 effectivenes...

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....

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 S...

In 2018, Sysdig made two critical decisions: pivoting its focus entirely to cloud security and welcoming Suresh Vasudevan as its new CEO. In this episode of Spotlight On, Suresh shares insights from his journey and unveils the bold decisions that have transformed Sysdig into a leading cloud security company . Suresh has learned the key to a successful CEO transition is shared decision-making. Over...

Building an AI-powered startup today presents distinct challenges: a lingering hype cycle, steep competition, endless customer education, and rapidly evolving technical capabilities. In this episode of Spotlight On, Syrup’s James Theuerkauf shares advice for early-stage founders navigating this inflection point. He discusses building an AI product that cuts through the noise and adds value, the ad...

Webflow provides a way to design, build, and launch powerful websites visually without writing code. In this episode, Vlad Magdalin shares his inspiration for the product, tracing the story back from his early passion for computer science and 3D animation to the very moment he recognized a market need for intuitive, visual web design tools. He provides an open look into the company-building challe...

When Klaviyo became a public company in 2023, we celebrated a moment over a decade in the making. In this episode of Spotlight On, Andrew Bialecki shares learnings from Klaviyo’s unique growth story, from the diligence that came from bootstrapping to the 'unfair advantage' gained by scaling a startup outside a typical tech hub.  Klaviyo is an intelligent marketing automation platform. Unde...

Spotlight On examines the technology shaping our world through conversations with the people building it. This season, established and rising leaders across both private and public sectors discuss the challenges and opportunities of building companies in today’s rapidly changing technology landscape. Learn more at at Accel.com/SpotlightOn.