Union Square Ventures
Type of businessPrivate company
Founded2003 (2003)
Headquarters
New York City, New York
,
US
Founder(s)
Key peopleAlbert Wenger
Andy Weissman
IndustryVenture Capital, startups
URLusv.com

Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flurry, and Carta.[1]

History

Union Square Ventures (USV) was founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson (a former partner of Flatiron Partners) and Brad Burnham (a former Executive in Residence with AT&T Ventures). They created USV with the intent of investing in and fostering the development of early-stage companies.[2] Their investments are "mostly U.S.-based Internet and mobile companies considered to be ‘disruptive’".[3]

Since its establishment, USV is one of the companies that are regularly included in Red Herring’s lists of top venture capital firms.[4] As of 2016, USV had 7 billion dollar exits, including Twitter in 2013 and Twilio in 2016.[5] USV's 2004 fund is one of the best-performing venture capital funds in history.[6] In 2011 USV was chosen as the best-performing venture capital firm the United States, based on investment return rate.[7]

In 2007, Albert Wenger, the former president of del.icio.us, joined the firm as a managing partner.[8] In 2011, Betaworks co-founder Andy Weissman joined USV.[9] In 2018, Rebecca Kaden, previously a General Partner at Maveron joined USV.[10] In 2019, USV announced two new partners–Gillian Munson, formerly the CFO of XO Group, and Nick Grossman, who had previously worked at USV on special projects such as policy and crypto.[11] In 2021, Samson Mesele, previously a corporate attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, joined USV as general counsel and partner.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Union Square Ventures, "Companies", retrieved June 5, 2021.
  2. ↑ New York Times, A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets on Young Firms", September 22, 2008
  3. ↑ Wall Street Journal, "Union Square Ventures Rides Twitter and Tumblr Exits on Fundraising Trail" November 21, 2013
  4. ↑ Red Herring, "Maximizing Venture Capital Investments" May 1, 2012
  5. ↑ "Union Square Ventures is Really F'n Good". June 23, 2016.
  6. ↑ Wall Street Journal, "Union Square Ventures Rides Returns to New Set of Funds" April 30, 2019
  7. ↑ Business Insider, "It's Official: Union Square Ventures Is The Top VC in the World" April 9, 2011
  8. ↑ Alex Wilhelm (April 10, 2020). "Listen to our midweek chat with USV's Albert Wenger". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  9. ↑ Jay Yarow. "Betaworks Cofounder Andy Weissman Jumps To Union Square Ventures". Business Insider. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  10. ↑ Polina Marinova (March 28, 2018). "Meet Union Square Ventures' First Female General Partner". Fortune. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  11. ↑ "USV closes two funds, adds two partners". PitchBook Data. May 1, 2019. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  12. ↑ "Joining Union Square Ventures". Union Square Ventures. April 28, 2021. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
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