Accel Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm focusing on early stage and growth equity investments, has appointed Rob Solomon as venture partner.
Most recently, Solomon (pictured) served as president and chief operating officer for Groupon responsible for sales, marketing, business development, operations and international as the company experienced rapid growth going from 100 employees to 6,000.
As venture partner, Solomon will be evaluating early stage and growth equity opportunities with Accel. He will also play a major role in advising the firm’s portfolio companies on a wide range of strategic and operational issues like product management, scaling infrastructure, business operations, and mergers and acquisitions.
Accel Partners has been an early investor in consumer internet companies including Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Kayak, Prezi, Rovio (Angry Birds), Trulia, and Vox Media.
"Rob is a successful and proven executive and investor who adds tremendous value to our firm and we are excited to have him join us," says Accel partner Andrew Braccia. "He has been at the helm of some of the most high profile consumer internet brands and has demonstrated a unique ability to inspire and lead teams through both rapid growth and challenging times."
Solomon brings more than 18 years of experience as an investor and consumer technology executive to Accel. Prior to Groupon he was a venture partner at TCV and chief executive of SideStep, the web’s first real-time vertical search engine in the travel category. Under his leadership the company experienced a successful turnaround and merger with Kayak. Prior to SideStep, Solomon was a member of Yahoo!’s executive management team and served as Senior Vice President, Commerce.
"Accel has an excellent reputation for putting their portfolio companies at the center of everything that they do, and I believe that philosophy has been core to their success over the past 30 years," says Solomon. "I’m very excited to be working alongside the brightest investors and entrepreneurs around, to help identify and scale Internet technologies that will transform our world."
Over the course of his career, Solomon has served on a number of boards and currently sits on the board of directors for HomeAway, HighGear Media (Accel Partners and Greylock) and the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA.
