When did America become too afraid to explore a frontier?
America's idea of itself is inextricably tied to the opening of the American West. In the 19th century America embraced the entrepreneurs, and rugged individuals who sought to reinvent themselves by going west. Joe Manchin seems to have forgotten who [...] Read more
A VC: Sidecar
Announcing the investment in Sidecar that USV made last summer Read more
CloudFlare
Joi Ito likes to say the Internet is a belief system. At Union Square Ventures, we believe in the Internet. We spend a lot of time thinking about how the Internet enables young companies to radically transform markets. We try [...] Read more
Human Dx
One of the amazing things that the Internet has given us is the ability for people all over the world to collaborate. At times we use this for silliness (supercuts of animal videos on YouTube) and at other times to [...] Read more
Bitcoin As Protocol
We owe many of the innovations that we use every day -- from our favorite longstanding websites to the latest mobile applications -- to the existence of underlying highly technical protocols. Endusers don't need to understand these any more than [...] Read more
Teaming up with THE Football App
Bill Gurley wrote a wonderful post last summer that detailed the differences between creating engaging user experiences on smart phones and on the web. He pointed out that these differences are not superficial and that in the past major differences [...] Read more