Accel vs Insight Partners

A side-by-side comparison of two Cybersecurity investors: Accel (Power Score 80/100) and Insight Partners (Power Score 82/100), both ranked among the most active firms tracked in this category.

AccelInsight Partners
Power Score™ 80/100 82/100
Assets Managed $20B+ $90B+
Founded 1983 1995
Headquarters Palo Alto, CA New York, NY
Sectors Enterprise Software, Consumer, Security Software, SaaS, Cybersecurity

Accel

Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz founded Accel in 1983, betting on a strategy of deep specialization in specific technology categories rather than spreading investments broadly - an approach that was unusual at the time. That focus paid off most famously in 2005, when Accel led Facebook's Series A, a single investment that became one of the highest-multiple returns in venture capital history and cemented the firm's reputation for spotting category-defining companies early.

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Insight Partners

Founded in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock in New York, Insight built its identity on outbound sourcing long before that was common practice - in the firm's earliest years, the two co-founders would comb through trade publications by hand looking for software companies that were hiring, and therefore growing. That research-driven, find-them-before-anyone-else approach scaled into a firm managing tens of billions of dollars, still built around the same instinct to spot momentum early.

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