Union Square Ventures

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Union Square Ventures
Type Private
Founded 2003
Headquarters New York City, New York, USA
Key people Fred Wilson, Managing Partner
Brad Burnham, Managing Partner
Albert Wenger, Partner
John Buttrick, Partner
Andy Weissman, Partner
Website "http://www.usv.com/"

Union Square Ventures (USV) is a New York-based venture capital firm that manages assets totaling $650 million as of January 2014.[1] The firm is best known for its early investments in companies including Zynga, Twitter and Tumblr.[2] Additionally, the firm's founder, Fred Wilson, has acquired a celebrity status in the tech world stemming in part to his blog AVC.com[3][4][5][6]

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.[7] Their investments are “mostly U.S.-based Internet and mobile companies considered to be ‘disruptive’”.[8]

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.[9]

In 2011, USV was deemed as being the best performing VC in the US based on investment return rate.[10]

Portfolio

Among USV’s notable early stage investments are:

References

  1. ↑ Union Square Ventures Site,"About Page" Jan 18, 2014
  2. ↑ Fortune Magazine,"Union Square Ventures Discloses New Fund Details and Maybe a New Partner" Dec 28, 2010
  3. ↑ Moz "Rise of the Celebrity Investor" Nov 07, 2010
  4. ↑ TechCrunch "The Top 20 VC Power Bloggers of 2010" Jan 19, 2011
  5. ↑ "TechStars""Fred Wilson Bio" Jan 18, 2014
  6. ↑ "Ad Age""NYC's Top VC Fred Wilson is Rich…and Grumpy" Apr 17, 2011
  7. ↑ "New York Times"A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets on Young Firms" Sept 22, 2008
  8. ↑ Wall Street Journal,"Union Square Ventures Rides Twitter and Tumblr Exits on Fundraising Trail" Nov 21, 2013
  9. ↑ Red Herring "Maximizing Venture Capital Investments" May 1, 2012
  10. ↑ Business Insider "It's Official: Union Square Ventures Is The Top VC in the World" April 9, 2011
  11. ↑ TechCrunch, "After 5 Years of Bootstrapping, Behance Nabs $6.5M From US, Jeff Bezos, Dave Morin & More" May 14, 2012.
  12. ↑ Variety, "Samsung Buys Internet Set-Top Startup Boxee" July 03, 2013.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8 13.9 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Business Insider, "Fred Wilson- Here’s Why I’m Investing in Bitcoin" May 09, 2013.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Business Insider, "This Was The First Defining Investment We Ever Made" May 23, 2011.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Forbes, "Duolingo Gets $15 Million To Translate The World’s Text Through Online Learning" Sept 17, 2012.
  19. ↑ PE Hub, "Etsy Raises $40M From Index, Union Square, Burda" May 09, 2012.
  20. ↑ Mark Evans Tech, "FeedBurner Taps Union Square" Feb 07 2006. Archived February 1, 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ↑ The National Post, "How a Tweet Led to Toronto Medical Photo App Figure 1 Getting Backing from Union Square Ventures" Aug 26, 2014
  22. ↑ Gigaom, "Flurry Rides the Mobile Boom, Raises $25M with Eye Toward IPO" November 02, 2012.
  23. ↑ Business Insider, "Foursquare Raises $1.35 Million, Led By Union Square Ventures" Sept 04, 2009
  24. ↑ Venture Beat, "UK-based Funding Circle raises $37M to fund American small businesses" Oct 23, 2013
  25. ↑ Business Insider, "Indeed, An Almost Entirely Bootstrapped Job Search Giant, Gets A Monster Exit" Sept 25, 2012.
  26. ↑ All Things D, "Kickstarter Fesses Up: The Crowdsourced Funding Startup Has Funding, Too" Mar 17, 2011.
  27. ↑ Venture Beat, "Meetup Raises Undislosed sum From Union Square Ventures" July 24, 2008.
  28. ↑ Bloomberg Business Week, "MongoDB Now King of NYC Startups With $1.2 Billion Valuation" Oct 04, 2013.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Venture Beat, Square Ventures, Spark Capital Invest in Work Market," June 14, 2010.
  32. ↑ AllThingsD, "Google Ventures Bets on Mobile Ad Startup YieldMo"," December 5, 2013.
  33. ↑ Beta Beat, "Zynga’s IPO is a Fund Maker for Union Square Ventures" July 01, 2011.

External links

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