Union Square Ventures (USV) was founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham.[2] They created USV with the intent of investing in and fostering the development of early-stage companies.[3] Their investments are "mostly U.S.-based Internet and mobile companies considered to be ‘disruptive’".[4]
USV is regularly included in Red Herring’s lists of top venture capital firms.[5] As of 2016, USV had 7x one billion plus dollar exits, including Twitter in 2013 and Twilio in 2016.[6] USV's 2004 fund is one of the best-performing venture capital funds in history.[7] In 2011 USV was chosen as the best-performing venture capital firm the United States, based on investment return rate.[8]
In 2007, Albert Wenger, the former president of del.icio.us, joined the firm as a managing partner.[9] In 2011, Betaworks co-founder Andy Weissman joined USV.[10] In 2018, Rebecca Kaden, previously a General Partner at Maveron joined USV.[11] In 2019, USV announced two new partners–Gillian Munson, formerly the CFO of XO Group, and Nick Grossman, who had previously worked at USV on special projects such as policy and crypto.[12] In 2021, Samson Mesele, previously a corporate attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, joined USV as general counsel and partner.[13]
