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]
