Greg Waldorf Joins Accel Partners as CEO-in-Residence

SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Feb. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Accel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital and growth equity firm, today announced the addition of Greg Waldorf as CEO-in-Residence. Greg brings extensive leadership and operational experience from his years of working with high growth companies as an entrepreneur, investor, and executive, including his last 5 years as CEO of eHarmony.

As CEO-in-Residence, Waldorf will work with the existing Accel portfolio and Accel team to identify and analyze new ventures that have the potential to define important market categories. Greg has worked with Accel Partners on the Board of real estate site, Trulia.

"As both a CEO and an outside director, I have seen the team at Accel helping entrepreneurs to build both pre-revenue startups and high growth enterprises," said Waldorf. "I look forward to spending time with their portfolio and working on new opportunities together. This is a tremendous time in the world of technology to build transformational companies that benefit consumers and businesses."

"Greg has been an outstanding executive and board member" said Sameer Gandhi, Partner, Accel Partners. "His experience on consumer acquisition and social media will be of huge help to Accel Partners and our portfolio companies."

Waldorf spent more than 11 years working with eHarmony, Inc. where he became the company's founding investor in 2000. Through the early years of the company's growth, he was a very active advisor and board member working closely with the company's founders, culminating in his appointment as CEO in 2006. During the last five years, Waldorf drove a global expansion of the company into new markets both domestically and in 15 countries worldwide.

In addition to operating a profitable business with more than $1 billion of revenue during his tenure, eHarmony has made a very positive impact in the lives of its subscribers. According to research from Harris Interactive, 542 Americans marry on an average day after meeting through eHarmony, nearly 5% of new marriages in the United States.

Waldorf also has extensive experience as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. In 2010, Waldorf received the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was a National Finalist in his category. His focus on entrepreneurship extends to philanthropy as well, having developed StartUp, a nonprofit initiative in East Palo Alto that assisted residents in creating small service businesses.

Waldorf has been cited on matters relating to investing and technology in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, Time, BusinessWeek and the Economist, among other publications. He has also made numerous broadcast appearances on FOX News, Good Morning America, Bloomberg, and CNBC.

Waldorf was a founding member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Management Board, is currently on the Board of Overseers of Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and serves on the Board of the John Wayne Cancer Institute at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. He holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles.

About Accel Partners

Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, California, New York City, London, New Delhi and Bangalore, as well as in China via its partnership with IDG-Accel.

Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Actuate, AdMob, Agile Software, Alfresco, AMCC, Arrowpoint, Atlassian, BBN, Brightcove, Check24, ComScore, Etsy, Facebook, Foundry Networks, Gameforge, GlamMedia, Groupon, Imperva, Infinera, Interwoven, IronPlanet, JBoss, Kayak, Macromedia, metroPCS, OPOWER, Polycom/PictureTel, Playfish, Portal Software, QlikTech, Quidsi (diapers.com), Rapt, Real Networks, Redback Networks, Responsys, Riverbed, SupportSoft, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, Wily Technology, XenSource and Zimbra. For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com, or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/accel.

SOURCE Accel Partners