private founded 2003 headquarters new york city new york u.s. key people fred wilson managing partner brad burnham managing partner albert wenger managing partner john buttrick partner andy weissman partner website www.usv.com union square ventures usv is an american new york based venture capital firm that manages assets totaling 1 billion as of march 2016 . 1 the firm is best known for its early investments in companies including zynga twitter and tumblr . 2 additionally the firm s founder fred wilson has acquired a celebrity status in the tech world stemming in part to his blog avc.com 3 4 5 6 contents 1 firm 2 portfolio 3 references 4 external links firm edit union square ventures was originally founded in 2003 by fred wilson a former partner of flatiron partners and brad burnham a former executor in residence with at & t ventures . the two men created usv with the intent of investing in and fostering the development of early stage companies . 7 their investments are mostly u.s. based internet and mobile companies considered to be disruptive . 8 in 2007 albert wenger the former president of del.icio.us joined the firm as a partner . the team was rounded out by the subsequent additions of john buttrick and betaworks founder andy weissman . usv is one of a handful of firms that regularly included in red herring s lists of top venture capital firms . 9 in 2011 usv was deemed as being the best performing vc in the us based on investment return rate . 10 portfolio edit among usv s notable early stage investments are behance 11 boxee 12 casetext 13 clarifai 13 coinbase 14 clue mobile app 13 crowdrise 15 del.icio.us 16 disqus 17 dronebase 13 duckduckgo duolingo 18 etsy 19 eshares 13 feedburner 20 figure 1 21 flurry 22 foursquare 23 funding circle 24 indeed 25 kickstarter 26 koko 13 la ruche 13 meetup 27 mongodb 28 ob1 13 quizlet 13 radionomy 29 simscale 13 shippo 30 twitter 31 work market 32 yieldmo 33 zynga 34 references edit union square ventures site about page mar 17 2016 fortune magazine union square ventures discloses new fund details and maybe a new partner archived february 3 2014 at the wayback machine . dec 28 2010 moz rise of the celebrity investor nov 07 2010 techcrunch the top 20 vc power bloggers of 2010 jan 19 2011 techstars fred wilson bio jan 18 2014 ad age nyc s top vc fred wilson is rich and grumpy apr 17 2011 new york times a new kind of venture capitalist makes small bets on young firms sept 22 2008 wall street journal union square ventures rides twitter and tumblr exits on fundraising trail nov 21 2013 red herring maximizing venture capital investments may 1 2012 business insider it s official union square ventures is the top vc in the world april 9 2011 techcrunch after 5 years of bootstrapping behance nabs 6.5 m from us jeff bezos dave morin & more may 14 2012 . variety samsung buys internet set top startup boxee july 03 2013 . a b c d e f g h i j union square ventures portfolio . retrieved 18 december 2015 . business insider fred wilson here s why i m investing in bitcoin may 09 2013 . weiss geoff . crowdrise ed norton s charitable social network raises 23 million . entrepreneur media inc. retrieved 24 april 2014 . business insider this was the first defining investment we ever made may 23 2011 . shontell alyson 4 may 2011 . disqus raises a 10 million round and closes in on 500 million monthly uniques . business insider . retrieved 1 october 2014 . forbes duolingo gets 15 million to translate the world s text through online learning sept 17 2012 . pe hub etsy raises 40m from index union square burda may 09 2012 . mark evans tech feedburner taps union square feb 07 2006 . archived february 1 2014 at the wayback machine . the national post how a tweet led to toronto medical photo app figure 1 getting backing from union square ventures aug 26 2014 gigaom flurry rides the mobile boom raises 25m with eye toward ipo november 02 2012 . business insider foursquare raises 1.35 million led by union square ventures sept 04 2009 venture beat uk based funding circle raises 37m to fund american small businesses oct 23 2013 business insider indeed an almost entirely bootstrapped job search giant gets a monster exit sept 25 2012 . all things d kickstarter fesses up the crowdsourced funding startup has funding too mar 17 2011 . venture beat meetup raises undislosed sum from union square ventures july 24 2008 . bloomberg business week mongodb now king of nyc startups with 1.2 billion valuation archived february 22 2014 at the wayback machine . oct 04 2013 . vivendi buys majority stake in winamp shoutcast owner radionomy . variety . retrieved 18 december 2015 . shippo raises 7 million to further its goal of being twilio for shipping . venturebeat . retrieved 2016 10 10 . perlroth nicole . many win in offering but some are off list . ny times . retrieved 3 august 2015 . venture beat square ventures spark capital invest in work market june 14 2010 . allthingsd google ventures bets on mobile ad startup yieldmo december 5 2013 . beta beat zynga s ipo is a fund maker for union square ventures july 01 2011 . external links edit official website v t e private equity and venture capital basic investment types buyout venture mezzanine growth secondaries equity co investment history history of private equity and venture capital early history of private equity private equity in the 1980s private equity in the 1990s private equity in the 2000s terms and concepts buyout financial sponsor management buyout divisional buyout buy sell agreement leveraged recapitalization dividend recapitalization venture angel investor business incubator post money valuation pre money valuation seed money startup company venture capital financing venture debt venture round structure private equity firms and funds limited partnership limited liability company carried interest management fee publicly traded private equity business development company venture capital trust private investment in public equity 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