Writing

Our portfolio company Twitter announced today that they have closed a second round of financing, led by Spark Capital and including Jeff Bezos' investment entity Bezos Expeditions. Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage, another existing investor, also participated in the [...]  Read more

Back in February, we posted here that we were looking to hire an analyst. We asked anyone who was interested in the position to leave a comment. We received 164 comments and then worked through all of them to find [...]  Read more

Most companies grow in steps. They operate at one level for a while, make good progress, then take a step up, and start operating at a new level.In the past month, our portfolio company has stepped it up on a [...]  Read more

We are in the middle of a disruptive change in the media landscape brought on by two-way interactive media. No longer do we simply rely on the New York Times for national news, Dow Jones or Bloomberg for business news, [...]  Read more

Last year, we helped get a company started called TargetSpot. TargetSpot is the first self serve ad network for streaming audio and internet radio. TargetSpot was built by our portfolio company Oddcast for CBS Radio and they eventually concluded it [...]  Read more

Last week Union Square Ventures participated in a Series D round for Etsy. We have participated in every round of financing for the company and pleased to have been able to invest in such an exciting opportunity.CEO Rob Kalin outlines [...]  Read more

In the middle of last year my friend Mark Pincus stopped by my office to tell me what he'd been up to. Facebook apps it turned out, of course. He said, "Fred, by this time next year, everything you invest [...]  Read more

In my last post on failure rates in early stage venture capital, I made the point that every portfolio is going to have failures. I’ve made 32 direct investments (the deals I’ve sourced, led, and managed myself) over the past [...]  Read more