[ad_1]
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 automobiles, agency accomplice Andy Weissman and the agency’s basic counsel, Samson Mesele, wrote that USV plans to “make investments our new funds across the identical thesis as our earlier funds: we’re searching for alternatives out there 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 information, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols.)
Relatedly, USV will proceed to spend money on “each Web2 and Web3 firms and tasks,” the put up states.
Early final 12 months, 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.
Certainly one of these newer, associated bets is Polygon, a platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure improvement. (USV, which waded into crypto forward of most corporations, was additionally an early investor in Coinbase and owned 8.2% of its Class B shares on the time of its direct providing final 12 months.)
A few of USV’s newer bets embrace Slope, an API developer that allows 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 automobiles into EVs utilizing batteries that it designs and manufactures; Alife, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s making an attempt to improve the efficacy of IVF procedures by means of 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 12 months 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 buyers to purchase fractional possession in various 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 buyers, 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 at the very least 5%, respectively, on the time of their public choices, per their S-1 filings.
Certainly, USV cofounder Fred Wilson stays extremely lively 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 needs to be occurring. Twitter needs to be decentralized as a protocol that powers an ecosystem of communication services and products.”
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 imagine {that a} single individual proudly owning one of the crucial necessary communications protocols of the web is a foul thought, however perhaps 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 12 months) 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 types regarding the agency’s seventh flagship fund, shouldn’t be listed.
[ad_2]
Source link