TechCrunch Disrupt has a long history of bringing leading venture capitalists to the stage to yammer about their industry. Our impending TC Disrupt conference happening on September 21-23 is no different. This time around one of our investor guests is Arun Mathew of Accel, a venture capitalist that you might recall from his recent participation in Webflow’s huge $140 million Series B.
But we aren’t merely asking Mathew out to the event to chat low-code, or SaaS, or simply current intra-venture capital investing dynamics. Instead, he’ll be taking part in our panel on alternative financing (alt-finance) with a few folks that aren’t venture capitalists, but still deploy capital into startups.
Having an Accel partner take part in the panel makes good sense, as the venture firm has an interesting way of approaching bootstrapped companies. Namely that it is willing to show up to pretty large companies and write huge checks. That’s how Accel got into Qualtrics, for example, a deal that worked out pretty well.
But Accel invests from seed through super-late stage, making Mathew the perfect person to bring the venture perspective to the conversation.
The chat should hit on revenue-based financing, other more exotic forms of alt-finance and where the venture world may see capital partnerships, and funding rivalries. Our goal won’t be to incite an argument, but instead to unfold the private capital markets in a manner that helps fans of traditional VC — if there is still such a thing in today’s Tiger Global-led world — and believers in newer methods of capital deployment learn from each other. And so that founders can carve the most reasonable path for themselves as they seek to grow their businesses.
All told it should be a bop and I will see you there!
