Union Square Ventures

Union Square Ventures

Company type	Private
Industry	Venture capital
Founded	2003 (2003)
Founder	Brad Burnham, Fred Wilson
Headquarters	New York City , United States
Area served	United States
Key people	Brad Burnham, Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, Andy Weissman, Rebecca Kaden, Gillian Munson, Nick Grossman, Samson Mesele
Products	Venture capital investments

Union Square Ventures (USV) is a venture capital firm headquartered in New York City, United States. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including prominent names like Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flurry, and Carta.

History

Established in 2003 by Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson, USV specializes in early-stage investments, primarily targeting Internet and mobile enterprises based in the U.S. that demonstrate transformative potential. The firm is consistently ranked among the leading venture capital firms worldwide.

By the year 2016, USV had secured seven exits valued at over one billion dollars each, including major transactions such as Twitter in 2013 and Twilio in 2016. The venture capital fund launched in 2004 by USV is considered one of the most successful in industry history. In 2011, the firm was recognized as the top-performing U.S. venture capital firm based on its investment returns.

Albert Wenger, previously president of del.icio.us, joined USV as managing partner in 2007. Andy Weissman, who co-founded Betaworks, was added as a partner in 2011. In 2018, Rebecca Kaden became a general partner following her time at Maveron. The firm expanded its leadership team in 2019 by bringing on Gillian Munson, former CFO of XO Group, and Nick Grossman, who had been involved with USV’s policy and cryptocurrency efforts. Samson Mesele, once a corporate attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, joined as general counsel and partner in 2021.