Writing
Choose
Jobbatical
Joel Monegro – Mar 2, 2016
Today we lead mostly sedentary lifestyles. Once we learned how to harvest the planet's natural resources for our survival all those thousands of years ago, we abandoned our nomadic way of life and settled down by the rivers. We learned [...] Read more
Veniam’s new round of funding
Brad Burnham – Feb 11, 2016
Our portfolio company Veniam announced today that they had closed a significant new round of funding led by Verizon Ventures. The funding will allow Veniam to deliver on the promise of "smart cities" by connecting thousands of vehicles in public and [...] Read more
Foursquare: Building the Business
Albert Wenger – Jan 14, 2016
We first invested in Foursquare in 2009 when the company was just getting going because we believed that location was a native aspect of smartphones. Since then our conviction about the importance of location to the mobile experience has continued [...] Read more
Introducing Koko
Brad Burnham – Dec 15, 2015
Last week, Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times mused in his column that the Internet was getting meaner: “If you’ve logged on to Twitter and Facebook in the waning weeks of 2015, you’ve surely noticed that the Internet now [...] Read more
SimScale
Albert Wenger – Dec 2, 2015
We are excited to announce our investment in Munich-based SimScale. SimScale makes complex engineering simulations, such as mechanical stress and fluid flows, available to anyone in the world with a web browser. These kinds of simulations were pioneered in the [...] Read more
Quizlet
Fred Wilson – Nov 23, 2015
There are some investments that take years to make. They are often our best investments. Quizlet took something like five years to go from a company we got interested in to a USV investment. In March 2009, we hosted an [...] Read more
Clue
Albert Wenger – Oct 9, 2015
We are excited about our investment in Berlin-based Clue, which puts women around the world in charge of their fertility and their health more generally. Clue does this by offering a period tracker and fertility app. We have been pursuing [...] Read more
Kickstarter, PBC
Fred Wilson – Sep 21, 2015
I recall meeting Perry Chen for the first time in the old USV offices on the 14th floor back in 2009 shortly after Kickstarter launched. He and his partners Yancey and Charles were onto something, I was sure of that. [...] Read more
La Ruche qui dit Oui!
Fred Wilson – Jun 16, 2015
La Ruche qui dit Oui! (the hive that says yes) is a marketplace that connects farmers to people who want farm fresh food in their kitchens and on their tables. We got to know the company last winter when my [...] Read more