Android Veterans Tom Moss, Mike Chan Head To Accel As Entrepreneurs In Residence

Tom Moss and Mike Chan, who were early leaders and engineers on Google Android, are heading to Accel Partners as entrepreneurs in residence. Moss just left Google for the second time, after his enterprise mobility startup 3LM was acquired by Motorola (which was then acquired by Google).

Moss originally ran carrier partnerships and business development for Android, just as the project began to take off. This was years before Android became the force that it is today in a dual platform world. Chan worked on Android as a senior software engineer for nearly five years.

“There’s still so much to do in mobile before the dust settles,” Moss said. “You don’t need to build an app, because there are so many. You can also work deeper in the stack, and directly with OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] on hardware.”

Moss hinted that he’d likely work on something related to Android, yet again. His last company 3LM was scooped up by Motorola before it came out of stealth mode. Its goal was to make Android enterprise-friendly and secure as more workers bring their own personal devices to work. Moss said 3LM is still on course and making about $1 million per employee in revenue.

One problem he’s interested in is in battery life. Chan was the tech lead for power management in the Android ecosystem.

Both of them went to Accel in part because investor Rich Wong backed their last company 3LM. Wong has lead the firm’s deals in companies like Admob, which was acquired by Google for $750 million, and MoPub.

“Rich Wong was the VC that taught me that VCs are not just about money,” he said. “We had a really positive experience at 3LM. It was kind of a no brainer. Life is short and you want to work with people you like.”

Accel has had several entrepreneurs in residence in the past including Cloudera’s Jeff Hammerbacher and Amr Awadallah and former Salesforce.com senior vice president Chuck Ganapathi, who is working on a new company.