A historical collection of our writing.
This morning we have launched the new web site for Union Square Ventures at usv.com. We are very excited about all the dynamic elements on the site. For instance, if you visit the page for a portfolio company such as foursquare, you will see recent blog posts, tweets, photos and videos about the […] Read more (opens Continuations in a new tab)
David Heinemeier at 37signals published a post titled “Bug tracking isn’t a network-effect business” in response to a piece by Joel Spolsky in Inc. asking “Does Slow Growth Equal Death?” Heinemeier’s post is a possibly intentional misreading of Spolky’s so as to make it seem more controversial than […] Read more (opens Continuations in a new tab)
I will be participating in an ad:tech panel this afternoon with the title “Digital Economy 2010: A Robust Recovery or Another Year of Trench Warfare?” I have to admit that I am not entirely sure what that means, but in a prep call with moderator Mark Mahaney we came up with some fun questions. The […] Read more (opens Continuations in a new tab)
It is likely that the unemployment rate is going to hit 10 percent when the next monthly report comes out on Friday. That is 1 in 10 people without a job (in fact it is worse because the official statistics significantly undercount). Now we have had some growth in the economy last quarter, but a […] Read more (opens Continuations in a new tab)
I love Vernor Vinge’s concept of a “programmer-archeologist” (A Deepness In the Sky, he also coined “programmer-at-arms”) as someone who digs through the layers of existing systems to understand why and how stuff works. I was reminded of this over the weekend, as I worked through some old code of […] Read more (opens Continuations in a new tab)
One of the great things about being focused on investing in web services is that the technical challenges faced by almost all of the companies in the Union Square Ventures portfolio tend to be the same. The solutions on the other hand vary widely. Some companies rack their own servers, others are […] Read more (opens Continuations in a new tab)
