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Fat Protocols

Note: see the 2020 follow-up post here: Thin Applications Here's one way to think about the differences between the Internet and the Blockchain. The previous generation of shared protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, etc.) produced immeasurable amounts of value, but most [...]  Read more

USV Opportunity Fund, circa 2016

Over five years ago USV launched its first “Opportunity Fund” - a pool of capital meant as a complement to the core activities of our early stage funds. A few years thereafter, in 2014, we raised a second Opportunity Fund. [...]  Read more

Payjoy

Sometime in the late 90s I picked up my first mobile phone, a Motorola StarTAC. The sound quality wasn’t great but it was a radical change to no longer be tethered to a wireline. Next up was the Blackberry, which [...]  Read more

USV 2016, LP

This week, we will close our first investment in USV’s 2016 fund, which has total capital commitments of $175 million, the same size as our 2014 fund. This will be USV’s fifth early-stage fund. We continue to make new investments [...]  Read more

Mediachain

"This picture of Justin Bieber getting choked at a nightclub looks like a Renaissance painting" This photograph, and its caption, were posted on Imgur on April 17th. It quickly made it to the front page of Reddit, ultimately garnering over [...]  Read more

11 Years of the USV Investment Team

As part of our (currently open) analyst hiring process, we ask applicants to record a few videos of themselves answering questions about their views on USV, venture capital, and the web & mobile app ecosystem. So, in the spirit of [...]  Read more