Welcome!
You’re about to visit USV. We can’t wait to see you. Here is some info on what to expect.
If you only have a minute, here’s the summary:
- We recommend starting with a deck as a jumping-off point, but the best meetings often end up being very conversational (~10% presenting, ~90% discussion). A great pitch can often tee up an open dialogue among the whole group about your sector, product, and ideas.
- To present a deck, you’ll share your screen on Zoom.
- The entire USV team is invited to hear your pitch. There will be about 20 people total. Some guests will be on zoom while others will be together in our boardroom.
- The investment team includes 10 partners and 3 analysts. USV makes decisions through group discussion and we do not vote.
- Our investment thesis is about investing at the edge of large markets under transformative pressures.
If you have more time, more detail is below – see you soon!
What is going to happen when you join us on Monday?
You will join us on Zoom or in our new offices at 817 Broadway in NYC. There will be a mix of USV team members joining in from the office or from their current work location.
You can share your deck by sharing your screen on Zoom. We typically start with slides, but it’s very likely we will jump around and not get to every page. We ask a lot of questions and if you share the deck ahead of time, we will have read through it already anyway.
Who is going to be in the room with you on Monday?
There will be about 20 people on the Zoom — the USV investment partners (7), our General Counsel (1), the USV analysts (3), the Network team (2), the Finance team (3), and our office managers (3). We want you to meet the entire USV team, and the entire USV team wants to meet you.
The investment partners are:
Albert is our science fiction expert and a published author. Andy listens to the most live music and is a member of multiple fashion DAOs. Brad flies planes, and Fred develops zero carbon apartment buildings in his spare time. John is the most adventurous skier, Nick is a former US Open ball boy (along with another USV partner), and Rebecca has read more Russian literature than the rest of us combined. Samson oversees legal and tax structuring as well as fund and management company legal matters. Talk to him about issues arising at the intersection of law, technology, and society.
All investors at USV are generalists and the team doesn’t vote – instead we discuss the company, the product, and the category as a group in order to come to a decision.
The network team is:
USV invests in networks. We also operate as a network ourselves. The Network team is USV’s secret sauce. Inside the USV Network, there are more than 120 companies and 10,000+ employees. We believe that within the Network are all the ingredients, mentors, and future hires required to scale a successful company.
Lauren leads USV’s portfolio support and engagement. Matt leads USV’s AI initiatives, which include but are hardly limited to The Librarian. Jess leads Talent and Recruiting Talk to Lauren about her adventurous biking trips and Matt about his world record, and Jess about where she grew up.
The analysts are:
The analysts work closely with the partners on everything from developing new theses, finding investment opportunities, working on diligence, to supporting the USV portfolio. They may help you prepare your next pitch deck, get ready for a board meeting, or update your financial model.
Talk to Grace about her college radio show, talk to Matt about philosophy, and talk to Nikhil about NFTs.
What happens after you come into pitch?
After you pitch the full team, you will hear feedback within 24 hours.
The next steps may be the final stages of diligence (for example, talking to high priority customers), a term sheet, or sharing something that is making us hesitant to invest. Once we send a term sheet, we mean it. USV has never backed out of a term sheet. And once the term sheet is signed, we make every effort to support you:
- With talent: we curate a network of people who are looking for a job and want to work at your company.
- With follow on investments: we consistently participate in follow on rounds for early stage companies we back.
- And with mentorship: each investor has a 1-1 relationship with the founders they work with.
Anything else you should know about USV?
We are a thesis driven investment firm: we invest at the edge of large markets being transformed by technological and societal pressures.
Maybe most importantly, we are avid users of the products we invest in. USV has all of its stock certificates on Carta, usv.com is behind Cloudflare, we use SoundCloud to play music in our Monday team meetings and Splice to create even more music. We create internal Quizlet decks to help us get to know the attendees of events we host. We publish on Paragraph, are active on Farcaster and Zora, do research using Consensus, and make person to person payments with Sling. We have built and use a set of AI tools utilizing Hume for empathetic understanding and Jam for our product development.
Okay, that’s it! We can’t wait to meet you, see you on Monday.
Sincerely,
Team USV