Jim Breyer on Dell, StumbleUpon & The Celtics

It's been a busy day for venture capital firm Accel Partners. First, partner Jim Breyer agreed to join Dell's board of directors. Just a few hours later, Accel was identified as one of the investors helping StumbleUpon's founders to repurchase the company from eBay. So I spent a few moments on the phone with Breyer, and here's an edited transcript: Why join the Dell board of directors? Breyer: We are very big believers at Accel in founders becoming more and more important over time -- not just at the inception of the business. The very best companies are led by founders for a long period of time, and Michael Dell has obviously done so many of the right things in the right that that he is a model for entrepreneurial founders that are building their businesses. Michael and I spent time together at the World Economic Forum in Davos this past January, and had a series of conversations. I went back and spoke to many of our entrepreneurs and my partners. The feeling was unaninous that working with Michael and Dell would be very valuable for the portfolio companies. We strongly believe that there are still enormous opportunities in some of the platforms being created today, like social networks and cloud computing and storage. Dell, in many ways, sits at the intersection of those things.