Investor Jim Breyer of Accel Partners is having a very good day. In the past 24 hours, two companies where he is an investor and board member have been acquired for big bucks: Marvel Entertainment, which was bought yesterday by Disney for $4 billion, and BBN Technologies, which was bought this morning by defense contractor Raytheon for an undisclosed amount.
Breyer invested personally in Marvel, while he represented Accel investment in BBN. He sat on both boards (and also is a board member of Facebook, Dell, Walmart, Etsy, Brightcove, Prosper, and Real Networks). At BBN, Accel co-led a management buyout five years ago with General Catalyst Partners.
BBN is a storied technology R&D powerhouse. Started in 1948 by a group of MIT professors, it invented many of the technologies of the early Internet, including packet switching (1969), the first network email (1971), the first router (1976). It also came up with the @ sign, but much of its work is for the military, which is why Raytheon snapped it up.
Other recent exits for Accel include VMWare’s $420 million acquisition of SpringSource in August and Yahoo buying Xoopit for $20 million in July.
no: Uno
*chuckle*
whole fucking article about a great investor but not a single word about how much approximately he might have made.
come on TC. get with the program. even if the numbers arent available, SAY THAT.
no: 1
*chuckle*
Congrats Accel and Jim!
Not sure how I feel about Disney owning Marvel, but if they own ESPN, it can’t be that bad. They’ve done a good job with Pixar so far as well.
love BBN and Marvel, mostly for speech to text and Captain America, respectively. Jim Breyer possesses a particular kind of lucidity that few posses.
Tough to argue with these exits….
but, if memory serves me correct doesn’t Accel have a recent history of screwing a couple of small companies and founders.
I think they were forcing sales of companies as depressed prices, washing founders out etc.
http://ventureb...aying-hardball/
as an entrepreneur and founder of a couple of companies I would never go to Accel for founding.
Amazing, some guys have all the luck I suppose. Looks like I need to find a few mil so I can start investing.
just clicked on Jim Breyer’s CV, he must be one of the top 10 most connected successful guy’s in the US, reminds me of my CV, it’s also written on paper.
Jim’s a great example of how it’s best to be lucky AND good. He’s incredibly smart, and has worked very, very hard. That – combined with the stars aligning well – has made him a very successful guy.
“Amazing, some guys have all the luck I suppose. Looks like I need to find a few mil so I can start investing.”
What a clueless comment. He might have some luck, but look at the guy’s resume. Double major from Stanford in CS and economics then an MBA from Harvard. You don’t get that by being just lucky. You gotta be damn smart and hard-working.
Got his first job by writing to Steve Jobs asking for work. Not sure what he said, but whatever it was it got Job’s attention.
The guy might have had some luck, but I respect anyone who is clearly smart and bust their ass to get what they want, and this guy seems to be both.
BBN also incubated the Universal Search & Publishing spinout EveryZing.
Congrats Jim.
Congradulations to Jim. You have a great gift..”the midas touch”.
“it invented many of the technologies of the early Internet, including packet switching (1969), the first network email (1971), the first router (1976)”
It did not invent Packet Switching.
It did not invent the Router.
It did not invent nor send the first Network Email.
Check BBN’s website, ISOC.org, IETF.org RFC’s, read “Where Wizards stay up late” or just use Wikipedia……