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 17 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
Kaden: USV will not invest in startups competing directly with Amazon
“So the short answer is I don't want to invest In companies that think they're going to take down Amazon right now, because I believe it's extremely difficult, particularly at the stage we're going at.”
Kaden: Seed-stage startup mortality rates will rise significantly
“I think we have way increased mortality rates.”
USV publishes a public blog post as its investment memo for every deal
“We're public about every investment we make. In fact, our investment memos are our blog posts. You know, when we make an investment every single time we write a blog post explaining why we made that investment, that acts as our internal and external investment…”
USV's 2004 Fund Had Four Investments Each Return the Full Fund
“We made investments in Zynga, Twitter, Indeed, and Etsy within about a six month period. In our 2004 fund, each of those returned the fund.”
Union Square Ventures reversed its anti-crowdfunding stance to invest in CircleUp
“Union Square had said very energetically that they would never invest into an online equity investing platform. And they met us, and they changed the Their view because they realized that we were filling a need”
USV and Benchmark are rare exceptions to VC fund bloat
“Union Square Ventures, Benchmark, or some other exceptions to what I said.”
Kaden: USV and Maveron intentionally resist the trend of fund size inflation
“So both Maveron and USV have similarly sized Funds by Design. Both firms believe in relatively small funds, a very focused approach to kind of series seed and series A investing, and resisting this macro environment of raising massive amounts of capital as oth…”
Gordon: USV led edtech discourse years before making edtech investments
“And then Albert Wenger, he created the meme of hacking education, which I'm a fanboy of. And that was probably in oh nine or oh 10. He convened leading thinkers. And interestingly enough, they didn't invest in any learning and Companies for several years after…”
Union Square Ventures has one of the best performance track records
“Their funds are a little smaller than some of the other bigger firms like Sequoia, but they have one of the best performance track records of any VC.”
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'…”
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.”
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…”
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…”