Well, that was quick. A mere year after joining VC firm Accel Partners in London, Chrysanthos Chrysanthou (just say Chrys Chrys) is saying goodbye to the company.
Chrysanthou will instead scout for investments at the much younger early-stage VC firm Notion Capital, also based in London. More specifically, Chrysanthou will look at enterprise software, cloud and SaaS companies from across Europe for investments at the seed and Series A stage.
Chrysanthou was previously at Amazon Web Services, where he led business development with the startup ecosystem across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to Amazon, he spent nearly a decade at Cisco where he focused on software investments and acquisitions in his last role.
In other words, Notion Capital's specific focus seems to more up his alley. We understand that he will be working on a part-time basis for now before fully joining later this year. For Accel, it's a loss.
In March 2013, the VC firm announced the close of Accel London IV, a $475 million fund focused on Europe and Israel, which brought total funds under management for the region(s) up to $2 billion.
But the global investment firm is no stranger to losing high-profile investors. At the tail end of 2012, Adam Valkin left the firm (and Europe) to join General Catalyst, and more recently German entrepreneur/investor Max Niederhofer traded Accel for Sunstone Capital.
On the flip side, the firm did manage to attract another star investor, Fred Destin, last year. Destin joined Accel after more than a decade at Atlas Venture. I spoke to Destin over the weekend, and while there wasn't an official comment from him as representative of Accel Partners, it does seem like the split-up with Chrysanthou is an amicable one.
On a sidenote: European VC investment last year reached its highest level since the dot-com boom on the back of a healthy market for IPOs, and it seems like that trend will continue this year.
Also read:
Investments come with investors: 7 ways to exploit your VC
Are Europe’s newest VCs its most promising?
Tax incentives, an EU ‘fund of funds’ and more: behold the European ‘Startup Investors Manifesto’
