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USV Climate Fund

At USV we describe ourselves as a “thesis-driven venture capital firm.” For our core fund, we have been investing against Thesis 3.0 for some time. Over the last couple of years, we have been developing a separate Climate Thesis, including [...]  Read more

USV Thesis 3.0

We believe we are still at the beginning of the opportunity to broaden access with the most critical implications ahead of us. As a result, we decided to revise our thesis into a third version: USV backs trusted brands that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols. Read more

Addition by Subtraction

“Dangerfield eliminated everything from his act but the setups and punchlines” Alex Halberstadt’s essay on Rodney Dangerfield is a masterclass on how to improve by reduction. Dangerfield worked for decades as a comedian until he figured out the thing, his [...]  Read more

USV Thesis 2.0

Union Square Ventures has always been a “thesis” driven firm. We maintain specific principles about the internet that guide our investment decisions. While other things like stage and to a lesser extent geography, also matter, our thesis or point of [...]  Read more

Investment Thesis @USV

Venture firms operate a bunch of different ways. Some have a geographical focus, others have a sector focus, still others have a stage focus. Union Square Ventures' focus has evolved into what we call a "thesis" but is probably better [...]  Read more

Early Stage Investing

I thought I'd lead off my series of posts on "other things we look for" with a discussion of our preference for early stage investing. Most of our investment approach is built on top of our foundation as early stage [...]  Read more

Our Focus

A year ago when we first re-launched our web site as a blog, we did so because we felt that the environment was too volatile for a fixed investment thesis. Instead we suggested that our thesis evolves in a dialogue [...]  Read more