Fred Wilson | Union Square Ventures

Convertible and SAFE Notes

Fred Wilson – Mar 12, 2017

Angel/seed rounds used to be done via priced equity securities, either common or preferred. Then, starting about ten years ago, we started to see convertible debt being used in the angel and seed rounds. By 2010 this was the norm [...] Read more

Numerai and Polychain

Fred Wilson – Dec 13, 2016

USV recently made two investments in hedge fund managers. You might gather from that fact that we are moving away from venture capital. But that would be an incorrect assumption. What we are doing is finding new ways to invest [...] Read more

Proof Of Stake

Fred Wilson – Nov 19, 2016

There is a lot of cutting edge computer science being used in blockchain technology and, because there are multiple blockchains and protocols being proposed and tested, there are various experiments going on at the same time. This is all very [...] Read more

Hillary Clinton for President

Brad Burnham , Fred Wilson , Andy Weissman , John Buttrick and Albert Wenger – Oct 4, 2016

This is the fourth presidential election during the existence of Union Square Ventures and the first one in which we as a firm feel compelled to endorse a candidate: Hillary Clinton. As investors in technology companies, we believe that technology [...] Read more

Elephant Chart

Fred Wilson – Aug 28, 2016

I came across this chart today. Maybe all of you have seen it, but I hadn't. It is called "the elephant chart" because the shape of the chart looks like an elephant. It was created by Christoph Lakner and Bruno Milanovic for [...] Read more

Trashing Tumblr

Fred Wilson – Jul 20, 2016

So Scott Galloway thinks Tumblr was nothing more than a "porn site." I think that is a ridiculous comment coming from someone who says ridiculous things. Tumblr was, and still is, a vibrant social media platform. Just talk to the [...] Read more

Fund Level Vs Deal By Deal Carry

Fred Wilson – Feb 2, 2016

In a venture fund, the general partners will make something like twenty or twenty five investments. There are outliers for sure. A few venture funds will make less investments than that. And there are seed funds that will make significantly more [...] Read more

Quizlet

Fred Wilson – Nov 23, 2015

There are some investments that take years to make. They are often our best investments. Quizlet took something like five years to go from a company we got interested in to a USV investment. In March 2009, we hosted an [...] Read more

Kickstarter, PBC

Fred Wilson – Sep 21, 2015

I recall meeting Perry Chen for the first time in the old USV offices on the 14th floor back in 2009 shortly after Kickstarter launched. He and his partners Yancey and Charles were onto something, I was sure of that. [...] Read more