Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American

venture capital firm Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including

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, Stripe,

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, Flurry, and Carta.

History

Union Square Ventures (USV) was founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson (a former partner of Flatiron Partners) and Brad Burnham (a former Executive in Residence with AT&T Ventures). They created USV with the intent of investing in and fostering the development of early-stage companies. Their investments are "mostly U.S.-based Internet and mobile companies considered to be ‘disruptive’". Since its establishment, USV is one of the companies that are regularly included in Red Herring’s lists of top venture capital firms. As of 2016, USV had 7 billion dollar exits, including

in 2013 and

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in 2016. USV's 2004 fund is one of the best-performing venture capital funds in history. In 2011 USV was chosen as the best-performing venture capital firm the United States, based on investment return rate. In 2007,

Albert Wenger Albert Wenger is a German-American businessman and venture capitalist. Wenger is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in companies such as Twilio, Etsy, Firebase, Behance, and M ...

, the former president of

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, joined the firm as a managing partner. In 2011, Betaworks co-founder Andy Weissman joined USV. In 2018, Rebecca Kaden, previously a General Partner at Maveron joined USV. In 2019, USV announced two new partners–Gillian Munson, formerly the CFO of

XO Group The Knot Worldwide, formerly XO Group and The Knot Inc., is an American media and technology company that provides content, tools, products and services for couples who are planning weddings, creating a home, and starting a family. The company ge ...

, and Nick Grossman, who had previously worked at USV on special projects such as policy and crypto. In 2021, Samson Mesele, previously a corporate attorney at

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, joined USV as general counsel and partner.

References

External links

* {{Private equity and venture capital Private equity firms of the United States Companies based in New York City Financial services companies established in 2003 Financial services companies of the United States Venture capital firms of the United States 2003 establishments in New York City American companies established in 2003