Union Square Ventures turns 20 this year.  Brad and Fred began to deploy the first USV fund in 2004. The dot com bubble had recently popped, modern

USV’s Climate Thesis is to invest in companies and projects that provide mitigation for or adaptation to the climate crisis. One important way that we can

Yesterday, USV sent 500 ETH to the Bright Moments DAO and we got back one million Bright Moments DAO (BRT) tokens into our wallet. This is the third time

USV started playing with NFTs in 2017. First when Rare Pepes were starting to gain some niche popularity and then again when cryptokitties launched.

Ethereum has grown into an incredibly rich ecosystem, demonstrating the network effects that are possible when you combine wallets, developers, assets,

As we start a new decade it is worth examining our investment thesis. We continue to be convinced that our current focus on broadening access to

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...

We are pleased to announce that we have raised a new $200M Climate Fund. This is our second climate fund dedicated to investing in mitigation for and

We are pleased to announce that we have raised two new funds. The 2019 Core Fund has commitments of $200 million (up slightly from our last few core funds

We believe that Black lives matter and we oppose all forms of racism. We also recognize that the forces behind the incidents of the last few weeks are not

When things are serious, we need humor more than ever.  At this unique point in history, bringing more laughter and authenticity to a wider audience

We are excited to announce that we are again recruiting new analysts at USV. As is tradition, analysts at USV join our firm for a two-year “tour of duty,”

This is one of several posts on new areas we are exploring for USV’s Climate Fund. Natural resources such as fertile land and healthy oceans are the

The amount of invention and creativity happening in crypto is head-spinning.  Countless projects, protocols, apps, tokens, and communities are

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

USV participated in a seed financing of Code, which is building a global payments app on the Solana blockchain. Code announced the financing today on

We are in the final stages of our first cut for our 2020 Analyst Program. The next stage is phone/video interviews for a subset of the applicants.  We

We are pleased to announce that USV has raised a 2021 Core Fund with commitments of $250 million. This Core Fund will complement our new Climate Fund and

Co-authored by Hanel Baveja, Mona Alsubaei The USV Climate Fund is focused on companies that provide mitigation for, or adaptation to, the climate

Co-authored by Mona We recently announced that we have started to invest from our second climate fund. Much like our first climate fund this is an early

In 2009 we hosted a one day event we called "Hacking Education." We brought together a diverse group that included game designers, principals from

As we pre-announced a week ago, the time has come again for a new USV analyst cohort. This blog post lays out what the USV analyst program is and how you

We are excited to announce that we are recruiting two new analysts at USV. Analysts at USV are part of the investment team and work closely with partners both on current portfolio and potential new...

The Bitcoin whitepaper is now over a decade old and Bitcoin as a system has been up and running continuously since January 3, 2009. Much has happened in

I am delighted to share that I have joined USV as a Venture Partner in NYC where I will lead new investments, help to support founders in our portfolio,

This is one of several posts on new areas we are exploring for USV's Climate Fund. Geothermal energy has massive potential: just 0.1% of the Earth’s heat

Over the next year I'll be porting USV's thinking around networks into code, and writing the APIs, apps, and bots that will help folks at our 70+ portfolio companies communicate and collaborate with...

The proliferation of generative AI has opened up a brand new frontier of exploration for consumer internet entrepreneurs, particularly those looking to

When you really think about it, isn’t crypto kind of an amazing platform to build social products on? Crypto is public, global and gamified by default,

This is one of several posts on new areas we are exploring for USV’s Climate Fund. Electrifying buildings will play a critical role in managing our carbon

In 2015, we invested in Carta (FKA eShares) and wrote, “Anyone who owns shares or options in a private company instinctively knows that cap table

Existing electrical infrastructure is ill-suited to our current needs. It was developed for a world where we simply sent firm AC power from centralized

At its best, building a product with others is a joyful, magical process.  It’s like being on a championship team and getting into the zone.  Or

When I was at law school in a prior life, Contracts was one of my favorite classes. The cases were filled with colorful stories of people who thought they

Some of you in the USV network might know me. My USV journey started last year. I worked on the USV climate fund while doing my MBA. Now, I'm officially

Earlier this year, Variant and USV conducted an extensive web3 compensation survey of our portfolio companies.

It is hard to believe but well over two years have passed since Hannah, Hanel and David joined us as analysts at USV (David left midstream to start

I am delighted to join Union Square Ventures as General Counsel. I am joining the team at an exciting moment. We are pursuing many complex investments

Today we’re excited to announce the launch of our new USV Talent Network.

At USV, we are looking for applications that can bring hundreds of millions of users onto web3. As great as the decentralized finance and digital art

Transportation is the sector with the largest CO2 emissions, accounting for 37% of total CO2 emissions from end-use sectors globally. A crucial strategy

In the original designs for the World Wide Web, there was a clear line drawn between the services people interacted with (websites), and the software they

Co-authored by Rebecca Kaden Energy is a real-time commodities market.  The grid must balance supply and demand minute-by-minute to avoid blackouts

Even back when I was in graduate school, I found the price of textbooks to be high and their quality to vary widely. Now that I have children taking college courses, I was shocked to find textbooks...

As my partner Brad noted in 2019, the first generation of the internet (aka “Web 1”) was built as a “stateless” system.  In other words, data packets

We are thrilled to be welcoming the Arweave team to the USV portfolio. Part of USV’s most recent investment thesis is about investing in companies that

Back in March of this year, I wrote a post on the USV blog announcing our investment in Cryptokitties.  A lot has happened since then. The company that made Cryptokitties is now called Dapper and it...

Co-authored by Hannah Murdoch The language of commerce has always been visual.  Tiffany’s published their Blue Book in 1845, the first direct-mail

We’ve previously written about the storage gap. The proliferation of solar has led to an abundance of energy when the sun is out and a dearth when it’s

At a Sofar, you are sitting on the floor in a room full of mostly strangers, listening to artists you’ve never heard of, perhaps in a city you’ve

A new blockchain & cryptocurrency project, Libra, was announced today. Libra has been incubated by Facebook.  USV will be one of the

Trust is the foundation for lasting defensibility among the most enduring businesses.  We believe that brands are built around promises, and trust means

I have had the great pleasure of working with Matt Blumberg and the senior leadership team of USV's former portfolio company Return Path (which was sold

At USV, we have been active in the blockchain/crypto sector since 2011. At this time, we have direct investments in nine companies/projects in the crypto

USV's climate thesis is to "invest in companies and projects that provide mitigation for or adaptation to the climate crisis." When it comes to

In the original designs for the World Wide Web, there was a clear line drawn between the services people interacted with (websites), and the software they used to access those websites (browsers). ...

Disruptive innovations often start out as worse versions of something that already exists. Worse along all dimensions except for one, but one that turns out to really matter because it unlocks a new...

The market structure for Search is currently being reshaped. Horizontal and LLM-based “search agents” like ChatGPT and Perplexity are placing

3.5 billion people in the world do not have access to reliable electricity, and over $1T in renewable energy investments are needed in emerging markets in

For over a decade now, USV has been eagerly anticipating the emergence of “Web3” alongside “crypto”.  What we mean by this is that while blockchains

In the US, medium and heavy duty trucks account for 70% of all freight transport and 6.5% of all GHG emissions. While emerging technologies like battery

We are excited to be welcoming Wren to the USV portfolio. We first came across Wren while navigating the confusing process of purchasing carbon offsets

Part 1: The 2.0-> 3.0 Transition If mental health technology was like language-learning solutions, we have been in the language CD and tapes phase for

Co-authored with Mark Khalil Deployment of renewables has been accelerating globally. In 2022, around 12% of electricity came from wind and solar,

Nonfungible Tokens, or NFTs, provide a way to verify that a digital asset is uniquely owned and has specific properties, thus potentially giving the asset

We conducted our first network-wide Diversity and Inclusion survey with participation from 50% of USV portfolio companies. Here, we share insights and some metrics data that emerged from this...

I recently joined the USV team and as many investors and founders, I have been a long-time reader of this platform. So, I'm honored to be writing here!

We have recently gotten excited about several new emerging social networks and platforms. While the competition for prolonged attention only gets fiercer

In March of this year, the IPCC reported that global surface temperature for the years 2011-2020 had reached an average of 1.1°C higher than

Co-authored with Jared Hecht A new pattern is emerging that we are excited about at USV: entrepreneurs are upgrading physical industries with an AI-first

Today we’re excited to announce our investment in Chamber, a new service for securely holding digital assets. One of the challenges for crypto adoption is

Co-authored by John Buttrick Of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies, at least 21% now have net-zero commitments. For most of these companies, even

A second quick update on our analyst hiring process (previous update, original announcement). We have now reviewed all applications. We will be reaching out this week to all candidates, starting with...

Some of the ways we've expanded what it means to be a part of the USV network in 2019

Modern Fertility is building a trusted consumer brand in fertility, starting with their launch today of at-home testing for women. In the comfort of their own homes, and for a fraction of what it...

Co-authored by Hanel Baveja 91 million Americans struggle to access money when they need it, often resulting in excess cost and low credit scores. Sadly,