Startup Intelligence Platform
Union Square Ventures (USV) is a venture capital firm based in New York City, founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham. The firm focuses on investing in early-stage companies that are at the forefront of large markets undergoing transformation due to technological and societal pressures. USV has a history of backing over 130 startups, including notable companies such as Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flurry, and Carta. USV's investment thesis emphasizes identifying opportunities at the 'edge' of large markets, where new ideas can disrupt incumbents, and they seek out companies that leverage technological and societal pressures to create new behaviors and business models. The firm operates with a collaborative approach, treating venture investing as a team sport, and has maintained relatively small fund sizes to ensure alignment among entrepreneurs, general partners, and limited partners. Their guiding investment thesis has emerged over 20 years of investing in and supporting companies and protocols that invent new forms of opportunity and solve important problems in new ways. USV invests across various sectors, emphasizing network effects and rapid experimentation, and has maintained relatively small fund sizes to ensure alignment among entrepreneurs, general partners, and limited partners.