Luciana Lixandru, Partner at Accel, on how to spot global winners among local champions

“It’s very difficult to spot an outlier in the early days. At series A, outliers are not obvious. If you go towards group decision making, you can miss some of these outliers.” In this week’s episode of This Much I Know, Carlos is joined by Luciana Lixandru, Partner at Accel, the top-tier US fund with a strong presence on the ground in Europe. Prior to joining the firm in 2011, Luciana worked at Morgan Stanley and as an investor with Summit Partners. Currently, she successfully proves Accel’s thesis that innovation and talent can come from anywhere. In conversation with Carlos, Luciana reveals how partners at Accel filter investment opportunities to spot the next global winner amongst local champions. She also shares details on how the fund operates internally, and why being connected with an associate should never be taken as a slight. Tune in to hear Luciana’s journey from leaving her hometown in Romania for Georgetown to mastering financial terms whilst at Morgan Stanley and eventually investing in such tech superstars as Deliveroo, UiPath, Tessian, and Framer. Links: Luciana Lixandru - https://twitter.com/LucianaLix Accel - https://www.accel.com/ Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - seedcamp.com