Union Square Ventures (USV) is a New York-based venture capital firm that manages assets totaling $650 million as of January 2014.[2] The firm is best known for its early investments in companies including Zynga, Twitter and Tumblr.[4] Additionally, the firm's founder, Fred Wilson, has acquired a celebrity status in the tech world stemming in part to his blog AVC.com[5][6][7][8]
Firm
Union Square Ventures was originally founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson (a former partner of Flatiron Partners) and Brad Burnham (a former Executor in Residence with AT&T Ventures). The two men created USV with the intent of investing in and fostering the development of early-stage companies.[9] Their investments are “mostly U.S.-based Internet and mobile companies considered to be ‘disruptive’”.[10]
In 2007, Albert Wenger, the former president of del.icio.us, joined the firm as a partner. The team was rounded out by the subsequent additions of John Buttrick and Betaworks founder Andy Weissman.
USV is one of a handful of firms that regularly included in Red Herring’s lists of top venture capital firms.[11]
In 2011, USV was deemed as being the best performing VC in the US based on investment return rate.[2]
Portfolio
Among USV’s notable early-stage investments are:
- Behance[2]
- Boxee[2]
- Casetext[15]
- Clarifai[15]
- Coinbase[2]
- Clue (mobile app)[15]
- CrowdRise[2]
- Del.icio.us[2]
- Disqus[19]
- Dronebase[15]
- DuckDuckGo
- Duolingo[2]
- Etsy[2]
- eShares[15]
- FeedBurner[4]
- Figure 1[4]
- Flurry[4]
- Foursquare[4]
- Funding Circle[4]
- Indeed[4]
- Kickstarter[4]
- Koko [15]
- La Ruche[15]
- Meetup[4]
- MongoDB[4]
- OB1[15]
- Quizlet[15]
- Radionomy[33]
- SimScale[15]
- Twitter[5]
- Work Market[5]
- Yieldmo[5]
- Zynga[5]
