Joining USV: Finding the Evergreens

For some reason, when I think about USV, I picture an evergreen tree. Maybe it’s the firm’s green logo. Or maybe the physical trees sprinkled across each conference room. Or maybe it’s the firm’s decades-long history of being a venture stalwart.

In my first weeks here though, I’ve started to think that there may be something deeper to the metaphor. Being “evergreen” doesn’t simply mean enduring; it also means “renewing” - staying rooted while continuing to adapt, and grow, and flourish in a changing environment. And this is a quality that is deeply embedded in the USV culture - maintaining the discipline of a small, collegial partnership while repeatedly evolving its theses about the world.

This thesis-first approach to investing really resonates with me. As a Computer Science and Philosophy double major, I was fascinated by the idea that software could create autonomous markets and networks, and fell down the rabbit hole of blockchains. Over the years, I researched the underlying technology, participated in the governance of protocols like Uniswap, and eventually became a blockchain investor at Pantera Capital.

But the more I dove into the frontiers of crypto, the more I found myself spilling over into adjacent industries - agentic commerce, stablecoin neobanks, tokenized startups, and compute capital markets were all areas in which blockchains collided with other frontier technologies to fundamentally reshape the interaction between markets, agents, and networks.

Today, we’re entering a time when multiple frontier industries simultaneously bloom. AI agents are transforming the way we work, learn, and play; blockchain tokenization democratizes financial access to everyone around the world; and energy and biology are both becoming increasingly programmable.

In this world, what remains “evergreen” is the underlying lens of analysis: investigating how large markets get fundamentally disrupted by technological and social changes. USV has practiced this kind of thesis-driven investing for decades. Some theses have proven right, others wrong, and many have been refined along the way. But the underlying discipline remains consistent. And that to me, is the hallmark of what makes something evergreen - not something that never changes, but something that constantly adapts and renews itself.

I’m excited to continue doing what I’ve always loved doing - reading, writing, forming theses, meeting builders, and trying to understand where the world is going - across a wider surface area of generational technologies, including blockchain, AI, robotics, energy, and biotech, to find the ideas that survive cycles, and to find those evergreens that can stand the test of time.