The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 83 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
USV Will Add Partners Slowly and Remain in a Single Office
“It'll always be a slow process for us. We think these partnerships are, you know, the dynamics of the partnerships are very, very important, and we'll continue to, you know, as we Add people. We'll do it very slowly, and we'll do it in a single office, and we'…”
Infrastructure VC Relies on IP; Application Layer Requires a Thesis
“When you move from the infrastructure layer, where I think Investing is really defined by technical differentiation and intellectual property defensibility. You know, they're, I think, being more opportunistic, more deal flow driven, made perfect sense. When y…”
USV Avoids Direct Competitors to Enable Peer Collaboration
“Because we make an effort not to invest in direct competitors, they, they're perfectly comfortable sharing ideas with each other. So we've been able to organize, you know, because we don't do biotech For instance, you know, we can have a CEO summit where every…”
USV Created Venture Partner Role for Albert Wenger for Sourcing Etsy
“Been very actively involved in Etsy early on and brought Etsy to the partnership. And we created a venture partner role for Albert to, you know, to sort of compensate him for having brought Etsy to the partnership.”
USV backed Clue because smartphones will outscale traditional birth control access
“Invested in a company called Clue, based in Berlin, an app that lets women track their health and their fertility, and said yes because there are more women in the world who will have smartphones than have access to traditional birth control, and there's a hug…”
Wenger angel invested in Tumblr and Etsy before bringing them to USV
“Started making some angel investments, some of which became USV investments, and some of which were USV investments, so it's an angel in Tumblr, and it's an angel in Etsy, and I brought that deal to Union Square Ventures”
USV focuses investments on the technology deployment phase rather than installation
“The bulk of our investment Investing tends to be in the deployment phase, which is the phase of all the things that become possible once you have the infrastructure of the new technology installed.”
Kaden: Union Square Ventures and Benchmark prove small fund sizes work best
“I think one of the things I admire about Union Square and Benchmark is they've kept the fund sizes small and focused and we are big proponents of small fund sizes and focus at Maveron too, so I look to them for a lot of guidance.”
Network Effects Are the Primary Defensible Quality of Internet Businesses
“I think they had a real belief that networks would be the defensible quality of the internet, or the defensible thing about building a business on the internet. Whereas, let's say, In prior businesses like, ah, Microsoft Office or Windows or any other software…”
USV partners do 1-2 deals yearly versus First Round's 4-5
“And then also they're two different types of firms, too, so the likelihood that you'd get a deal done at USV when each partner's doing one or two deals a year was, Very different than first round when they're doing four or five because they're seed deals.”
Mignano: USV invested in small nuclear reactor startup Radiant
“USV a few years ago invested in a great company called Radiant, which is building small nuclear reactors that literally come off of a factory line.”
USV Passed on Anchor Before Co-Founder Mike Mignano Became an LP
“I've always been in or around New York, and as a builder, when I was building Anchor in New York 10 years ago, I got to meet USV, and I had an incredible, despite them passing, had an incredible experience. Started a very, very long friendship. I ultimately be…”
Mignano: Union Square Ventures is investing from a $275 million core fund
“For us, the fund that we're investing out of now, the core fund, it's a two hundred seventy five million dollar core fund”
Mignano: USV invested in micro data center company Rune
“We have a bet in a company called Rune. Amazing company. Have you heard of Rune? They're building micro data centers that sit directly next to generators. You know, wind farms and things like that to solve the portability issue.”
USV backed Abridge seed partly due to Duolingo precedent
“Also Union Square Ventures funded, and I'm sure that had something to do with USV being more comfortable with me, because I certainly didn't have a track record.”
Wenger: USV will not raise new funds for a while after 2022 vintages
“No, I mean, look I think we have brand new, 20, 22 funds. We have a new opportunity fund, a new core fund, a new climate fund. And so we're probably not going to be in market for a while because we've kept our funds very small.”
DuckDuckGo hits 1.6 billion monthly searches and profitability with 83 staff
“Over the last 12 years, Gabe has scaled DuckDuckGo to doing over 1.6 billion searches every month, a team of 83 fully remote full-time employees, and also raising funding from some of the best in the business, USV, and also, most importantly, being a profitabl…”
USV's core thesis focused on user networks defensible by network effects
“One is they helped me understand what it takes to develop an investment thesis, which by the time I left could be summarized there as large networks of engaged users, differentiated through user experience, defensible by network effects.”
Polychain grew AUM from $4M to over $200M within two years
“Having founded the firm less than two years ago with Four million under management in their initial fund. Polychain now has over two hundred million under management, with backing from the likes of Sequoia, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and USV, just to …”
Stebbings: YouNow has raised over $25M from USV and Venrock
“And to fund this immense growth, they've raised over twenty five million dollars in funding from some of the greats of the investing world, including Andy Weissman at USV, David Patman at Venrock, and a future guest on the show, I'm very excited to say, in the…”
USV repeatedly rejected Betaworks before making co-founder Andy Weissman a partner
“And as a New York company, we wanted what we thought the best and smartest and most empathetic venture investors in New York to invest in our company, which was USV, so we kept pitching them, and they kept saying no. They rejected my company as a business”
Andy Weissman: USV invests in 8 to 10 companies annually
“So we view ourselves, and we don't invest a lot, you know, maybe eight or 10 times a year, so we're long-term, very engaged partners, so that means we reserve full amounts for our companies, and we generally keep investing in them.”
Andy Weissman: USV recycled capital in each of its last three funds
“I think every one of our last three funds, I don't, can't recall a situation where we haven't recycled in the early stages of the fund”
Andy Weissman: USV operates from one office to keep partners together
“So for example, I believe this is a methodology that works best when everyone is in the same room, so therefore we only have one office.”
USV Took 80 Pitch Meetings to Raise First Fund in 2004
“It took us about 80 meetings and a heck of a lot of air travel to get that done, but we finally got the fund done in the early part of, I guess, 2004”
Publicly Sharing Investment Theses Attracts Aligned Founders
“Putting that thesis out there and being open about it and being open about all of our thinking about markets has proven to be very helpful. Introducing us to entrepreneurs who are working in the areas that we have been thinking about.”
Fred Wilson Managed Flatiron's Portfolio Post-Crash Into USV Launch
“Thing about Fred, most impressive things I've ever seen anybody do is the amount of effort that he put into managing out the Flatiron portfolio after the crash in 2000 which I got to watch, you know, up close and personal because he was very much still doing i…”
Felix Capital co-invested in The Food Assembly alongside Union Square Ventures
“I think it's going to be again LaRuche, LaRuche qui dit oui it's again called, it's called the Food Assembly in the UK. So it's a food marketplace. It's an investment we did with Union Square Venture and Fred Wilson.”
USV partner Andy Weissman helped Notation Capital raise its first fund
“These folks were not just mentors in the sense that they helped me learn the business, but actually they helped us raise Notations First Fund in many ways, and so Andy Weissman has been has been a mentor to us, who's a partner at Union Square Ventures.”
USV Evaluates Startup Pitches Using Broad Historical Network Frameworks
“When the term network comes up, we're talking in the most, let's say, Literally talking about networks of all types. I mean, it could be, it could go back to the railroad, railroad network. It could be actual social networks. And that gives you a real sort of …”
Charlie O'Donnell was present for USV's Indeed investment and first Etsy meeting
“Although I was there when we invested in indeed and there for the first meeting when we met Rob Kalin and at Etsy.”
Akhund: Over half of Union Square Ventures founders had kids
“We were funded by Union Square Ventures, and the average founder at Union Square Ventures is older, and more than half of them already had kids”
Andy Weissman lost a major deal by over-indexing on valuation
“I made a mistake by losing the deal, and I got stuck on price is probably why I lost it.”
RealtyShares surpasses $200 million in funded deals with top VC backing
“RealtyShares recently announced an incredible two hundred million funded deals through the platform, so a huge congratulations to them. For that, and they've also raised funding from some of the world's best investors, including the one and only Union Square V…”
USV Required Short Video Submissions for Analyst Applicants
“Well, the initial screening involved, ah, recording two two-minute videos. I think the questions were, ah, what aspects of tech most inspire you, or what are your greatest inspirations? And the other question was, ah, I think just to tell you, tell them a litt…”