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Venture Capital Dispatch
Nov 11, 2009 10:24 am ET

On Monday, Accel Partners had much to celebrate – two portfolio companies, AdMob Inc. and Playfish Inc., announced they sold to bigger players for more than a combined $1 billion.

Shortly after the announcements we chatted with the two Accel investors who made the bets: Rich Wong, who first invested in AdMob in 2007 alongside Sequoia Capital, and Kevin Comolli, who seeded Playfish in 2008.

Here’s an edited excerpt of our conversations, starting with Wong, who said Google Inc.’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob is a clear victory for “open mobile” technology and small mobile players that do not wholly depend on wireless carriers to get their products in front consumers: Q: How did you originally get involved with AdMob?

Wong: We have a hypothesis here at Accel about “off-deck” content for mobile, where the carriers are less important. It’s like the move to a more open Internet. We knew there was going to be a great leader in mobile advertising. Kudos goes to the management team, and the founder. [AdMob founder Omar] Hamoui is a developer at heart. He has the exact right instincts.

Q: AdMob has been growing at a pretty impressive pace since 2006. Is this what attracted Google, or is there more to the story?

Wong: AdMob and Google share the same vision, for an open mobile world. This industry used to move at telco speed, with long cycles and long business-development meetings. But it’s moving at a different speed now. We owe a lot of thanks to people like Apple and Google for making mobile move at a different speed.

Q: What does this deal say about the state of mobile technology today?

Wong: Open mobile is here. The walled-garden approach is ending. This is really the first major, visible example of how mobile can be. Small start-ups really can build a business without having to know all the secret handshakes. Things are looking very buoyant in this space.

Q: Why did you and AdMob’s other investors take stock in Google instead of cash?

Wong: Google stock is so liquid, it’s kind of like cash. This wasn’t a major topic, actually. We’re very happy with this exit. Mathematically speaking, [this compares very favorably] to other exits in the mobile-data space.

Q: What should industry watchers expect from mobile technology in the coming years?

Wong: Another wave of activity. The walled garden collapsing, more openness and better phones. The Droid, iPhone and BlackBerry are great phones. Things are really moving at a different speed now. It’s fascinating. I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep in the last month.

-Timothy Hay

It wasn’t but a few months ago that Playfish CEO and co-founder Kristian Segerstrale was calling veteran games maker Electronic Arts Inc. a “dinosaur.” Apparently he woke the sleeping dinosaur, which promptly scooped up social-gaming start-up Playfish for $300 million plus up to $100 million in possible earnout payments. Here’s London-based Managing Partner Comolli’s take: Q. You were the first institutional investor in Playfish. What were your thoughts when you first met Playfish’s founders?

Comolli: Kristian’s idea was to create the next generation of gaming – social games. They launched on existing social networks where people have the opportunity to play with real friends and have much more emotion and enjoyment.

We met the team and I still maintain it’s the best team in this category. They have the combination of creative and commercial skills and instincts.

Q. Why did the company decide to sell after only two years?

Comolli: There’s been a great deal of interest in the company for some time because it’s such a dynamic sector. Playfish was approached by a lot of companies, but EA was the only serious dialogue that was pursued. The combination with EA perked the founders’ interests – to continue to grow the company and continue to dominate the category.

We would’ve been 150% supportive if the company wanted to pursue the path of an independent company. They decided they’d like to link up with EA and we supported that all the way through.

Q. This is one of the largest acquisitions in the social networking/social media space since Lehman Brothers collapsed. Is the market for social media companies heating up?

It’s a very important category that’s still emerging. Playfish is just one app being layered on top of social networks. The Playfish acquisition now is one of many plays that will happen in the next coming years.

In the last four to six weeks the level of unsolicited approaches for our companies has really increased. We’re also planning to take several companies public next year.

Accel exited this investment profitably in 23 months – what does this say about the social-networking space, which has been criticized for failing to generate much revenue?

It’s frictionless to scale. Playfish has up to 1 billion game-play sessions per month and 60 million monthly active users. The company can scale so quickly because of the frictionless Internet model. That’s what makes it so unique. There’s been explosive growth on the Facebook platform. It really enables you to scale exponentially.

But all social networks are not created equal. Playfish primarily built its platform on Facebook (another Accel portfolio company). Facebook is one of the most durable platforms, it touches us every day. It’s become a true platform where people are building apps and companies on top of the platform. But not all social networks will be as durable I think.

We really believe in social networks and the social graph, as well as the social gaming space. We have another company, Gameforge, in Germany that is one of the world’s leading developers of massively multiplayer online role-playing games with 75 million registered users. So we continue to have big interest in online games and believe the category is still evolving and emerging.

-Tomio Geron Previous Portfolio Company CEOs: An IPO's Worst Enemy? Next The Daily Start-Up: Logitech's Buy Equals Happy VCs







Q&amp;A With Accel Partners About AdMob &amp; Playfish


