Union Square Ventures (USV), the 19-year-old, New York-based enterprise agency, has raised $275 million for its eighth early-stage fund and $350 million for its fourth alternative fund, the agency introduced in a blog post yesterday.
In sharing information of the 2 new autos, agency accomplice Andy Weissman and the agency’s basic counsel, Samson Mesele, wrote that USV plans to “make investments our new funds across the similar thesis as our earlier funds: we’re in search of alternatives available in the market that align with our Thesis 3.0.” (USV has written beforehand that this up to date thesis facilities on “trusted manufacturers that broaden entry to data, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols.)
Relatedly, USV will proceed to put money into “each Web2 and Web3 firms and tasks,” the put up states.
Early final yr, when Weissman introduced in an analogous weblog put up that USV had raised $250 million for its seventh core fund, he wrote explicitly that as in USV’s “final a number of funds,” the agency deliberate to speculate roughly 30% of the capital in crypto-related investments and that it supposed to carry tokens, and fairness, in early-stage blockchain-related tasks.
One in every of these newer, associated bets is Polygon, a platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure improvement. (USV, which waded into crypto forward of most companies, was additionally an early investor in Coinbase and owned 8.2% of its Class B shares on the time of its direct providing final yr.)
A few of USV’s newer bets embrace Slope, an API developer that permits retailers to supply buy-now-pay-later companies; a two-year-old, Egyptian electrical mobility startup known as Shift EV that goals to transform fuel-run autos into EVs utilizing batteries that it designs and manufactures; Alife, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s attempting to improve the efficacy of IVF procedures by AI; and Gumball, a two-year-old, L.A.-based podcast advert market based by the podcast firm Headgum.
USV, which additionally closed its first climate fund final yr with $162 million in capital commitments, has seen its share of exits through the years. Simply final month, the three-year-old inventory buying and selling platform Public purchased Otis, a startup that enables particular person traders to purchase fractional possession in different belongings, together with NFTs and sports activities memorabilia. Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed, although Crunchbase knowledge exhibits Otis had raised $16.5 million from traders, together with from USV and Maveron.
Along with Coinbase, others of USV’s higher-profile bets have included Etsy and Twitter, firms of which USV owned greater than 15% and no less than 5%, respectively, on the time of their public choices, per their S-1 filings.
Certainly, USV cofounder Fred Wilson stays extremely energetic on Twitter and tweeted earlier this month his perception that Twitter is “too necessary to be owned and managed by a single individual. The alternative must be occurring. Twitter must be decentralized as a protocol that powers an ecosystem of communication services.”
After Elon Musk’s bid to purchase the corporate was accepted by its board early this week, Wilson softened his stance barely in his publication, writing, “I proceed to consider {that a} single individual proudly owning one of the necessary communications protocols of the web is a nasty concept, however possibly it may be a bridge to one thing higher.”
On SEC filings for the brand new funds, Wilson, Weissman, are listed as managing members, together with longtime managing director Albert Wenger, basic companions Rebecca Kaden and Nick Grossman and each Mesele (who joined the outfit final yr) and USV’s longtime finance supervisor, Kerri Rachlin, who has not been included within the agency’s SEC fund registrations beforehand. (USV says the 2 have “joined the USV partnership in reference to the 2022 Funds.”)
John Buttrick, who joined USV in 2010 and was included within the SEC varieties regarding the agency’s seventh flagship fund, shouldn’t be listed.
