Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City1. Founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, the firm has backed more than 130 startups including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, and Carta1.
New York City's venture landscape in 2003
When Wilson and Burnham founded USV in 2003, New York City had no dedicated early-stage internet venture capital firm7. The city's venture scene was dominated by larger firms focused on biotech, media, and financial services — not consumer internet companies. Wilson had been investing since 1986 but saw a gap: there was no firm specifically building relationships with early-stage internet founders in New York7.
Wilson and Burnham created USV to fill that gap, focusing specifically on early-stage internet and mobile companies they considered "disruptive"1. Their thesis: network-effect businesses and marketplaces could scale with relatively small amounts of capital compared to capital-intensive industries7.
USV's 2004 fund became one of the best-performing venture capital funds in history, producing multiple billion-dollar exits from early investments in Twitter, Etsy, and Zynga4.
The Twitter investment and breakout exits
In 2008, USV led Twitter's Series A, investing at a critical moment for the social media company1. Twitter went public in 2013, generating USV's first billion-dollar exit2.
USV had invested in Tumblr before it was acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013, and in Zynga before its IPO in 20112. By 2016, USV had recorded seven exits worth more than $1 billion each, including Twitter and Twilio5.
In 2011, Business Insider named USV the best-performing venture capital firm in the United States based on investment return rate3.
Partner additions
In 2007, Albert Wenger, the former president of del.icio.us, joined USV as a managing partner1. Wenger brought operational experience from building a consumer internet company and later became a public voice on cryptocurrency and blockchain investing8.
In 2011, Andy Weissman, co-founder of Betaworks, joined USV9. His background in building product-focused companies complemented USV's thesis of backing entrepreneurs who created network-effect businesses1.
In 2018, Rebecca Kaden joined as USV's first female general partner, previously a GP at Maveron6. In 2019, USV added Gillian Munson (formerly CFO of XO Group) and Nick Grossman (who had worked at USV on special projects including policy and crypto) as partners1.
Current general partners are Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham, Albert Wenger, and Andy Weissman1.