Yesterday Nick published a post about USV's thesis-driven approach to investing. We also updated our About page. There is a section called How We Operate that I love. I have had a lot of conversations lately about why I joined USV and why I think it's such a unique place. I wrote about my relationship with the firm over time, but that was only part of the story behind my decision. The rest is encapsulated by this tweet that Andy wrote:
If I was asked to describe 3 things that in combination make USV a unique venture firm:
1/ small funds for 15+ yrs (last core fund $275M) 2/ "vehemently" generalist - everyone invests in every area of thesis 3/ completely collaborative investment decisions, made as a collective
Yesterday Nick published a post about USV's thesis-driven approach to investing. We also updated our About page. There is a section called How We Operate that I love. I have had a lot of conversations lately about why I joined USV and why I think it's such a unique place. I wrote about my relationship with the firm over time, but that was only part of the story behind my decision. The rest is encapsulated by this tweet that Andy wrote:
If I was asked to describe 3 things that in combination make USV a unique venture firm:
1/ small funds for 15+ yrs (last core fund $275M) 2/ "vehemently" generalist - everyone invests in every area of thesis 3/ completely collaborative investment decisions, made as a collective
All of these attributes are very important and unique, especially for Founders that choose to work with us.
To me, the beauty of venture capital is about the alignment between the investor and the entrepreneur. Managers of small funds make money the same way founders do, and there is something very romantic about this and it deeply resonates with me. Small funds like USV can deliver venture scale returns through concentrated investments in early stage companies. By design they are required to focus on Series A and seed. This is exactly where I like to focus because as a Founder the investors I partnered with at this stage were the relationships I cherished and found most helpful on my journey. I don't think there is a perfect fund structure in venture capital. There are many ways to do this and firms have been successful pursuing different approaches, but small funds are my strong preference and I think create the best alignment between entrepreneurs, fund managers, and LPs. Fred has written some excellent posts about this here and here.
Thesis-driven investing is important because it reflects that you know who you are and what you stand for. I also think it's also an entrepreneurial style of investing because you are painting a picture of how you think the world will unfold over the next 5-10 years and what you want to happen, and then strategically using financial capital as a tool to realize that vision with like minded entrepreneurs. A strong thesis helps Founders understand how an investor thinks and what motivates them beyond financial returns. Being generalist means that we can maneuver across social applications, marketplaces, web3, fintech, health, education, climate and more. This enables serendipitous things to happen in portfolio construction and for people to transfer learnings across all these different areas. A lot of the most compelling and exciting opportunities happen at the intersection of different fields and being generalist equips you to play at these intersections, which are often at the edge.
It was very important for me to join somewhere where partners work together as a collective. USV has long prided itself on being an equal partnership. I think this is the ideal model that creates a set of aligned incentives across the firm, and I fervently believe that incentives drive behavior. When there are no politics or people vying for a bigger slice of a pie, magic happens. When things are done collaboratively and equally, everyone roots for each other and the only winner is the team. This means that everyone is all in on every investment because everyone has a meaningful and vested interest in the success of a company and entrepreneur. When people work with USV they get the whole firm and that is quite rare and special.
Andy's tweet was less than 280 characters but it is loaded with meaning. The implications of these defining characteristics determine how the firm works and how an entrepreneur experiences USV, and they're one of the major reasons why I'm here today.
For the last several weeks I’ve tried to use Perplexity as my default search engine on mobile. I’ve enjoyed the experience more than Google and ChatGPT and I’m going to stick with it for now. I don’t know if my usage will last for a long time, mainly because I think other search applications will quickly innovate on user experience and that for the first time in decades this will be a hot and competitive market.
One of the new behaviors I noticed for myself was that I now like to use voice as an input to search. I’ve always been a typer, especially on mobile. But new AI powered search results actually improve as my queries become much more specific and detailed, and voice is a more seamless and natural way to make this happen. Instead of a quick text blurb, a conversational approach to search now yields superior results.
Voice as a part of UX has been around for a long time (eg Siri), but I think we are about to see it explode in usage. A key part of that is the movement to natural language as the fuel by which we make software do things for us. I no longer think of voice as just an input, I think of conversation as the new UX. This leaves many open questions, like will people be speaking out loud to their personal devices all day long? Is that preferable to being hunched over our phones tapping away? Will we be comfortable expressing our private interactions with software out loud?
My intuition is that in an era where a lot of digital experiences (particularly non media or entertainment based ones) are abstracted to voice interactions, we are going to witness a lot of behavior change at a mass population level. We are also going to see a lot of creative people start opening up new experiences within voice as an interface the same way we saw people innovate on UX on our mobile screens. Perhaps one of the early impactful things AI will do is free us from the glow of our physical devices.
Even though I just joined the firm, I've been connectedto it for my whole career. At tumblr I had the privilege to join board meetings as a 22 year old where I watched and learned from Brad where he was a board director. That's when I learned that "good board members listen first, then talk." I have worked with Andy since 2010 when he became GroupMe's first lead investor at betaworks. For the past decade I've continued to learn from him on the board of Splice which was founded by my dear friend and longtime business partner, Steve Martocci, who is a two-time USV founder. So much of what I wrote about in this Helpful Boards post I picked up from working (and seeing Phish shows) with Andy for nearly 15 continuous years. Over the past year, I've been fortunate to spend time with Rebecca and Nick and see how they work with Founders - and I've listened to those Founders proudly sing their praises. I have also co-invested with USV in numerous startups and have been an LP since 2014. This is a special firm filled with remarkable people.
Earlier in my career I'd often look at people in the valley that I admired (ie Founders, CEOs and Investors) and wonder how they got where they were. What I've come to understand is that they were active participants in growing networks that constantly paid it forward and deeply invested in relationships over long periods of time. It's a very unique thing to come of age in a growing ecosystem. When I started at tumblr, most everyone in NYC tech could get together at the OG Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. The community was tight-knit and a lot of people who were actively engaged in it are still around today. I fondly remember how Steve and I would run around trying to meet smart people while carving out a space for ourselves as hungry entrepreneurs. A lot of the connections I made back then are some of the most special relationships I have now. In many ways, every opportunity I've had is a function of the relationships I've built along the way. And as this NYC (and now global) tech ecosystem has grown, so too has the surface area for fun and serendipitous things to happen.
I'm looking forward to this new chapter and continuing to invest in the relationships that make life fun and rewarding while building new ones with great people inside and outside this special ecosystem. Over the past year when I was prioritizing the things that were most important to me when considering what to do next, number one was making sure I was working with people I could continuously learn from and have a ton of fun with along the way. I'm lucky to make that a reality thanks to the entire team at USV and the important relationships in my life that have supported me on this journey.
All of these attributes are very important and unique, especially for Founders that choose to work with us.
To me, the beauty of venture capital is about the alignment between the investor and the entrepreneur. Managers of small funds make money the same way founders do, and there is something very romantic about this and it deeply resonates with me. Small funds like USV can deliver venture scale returns through concentrated investments in early stage companies. By design they are required to focus on Series A and seed. This is exactly where I like to focus because as a Founder the investors I partnered with at this stage were the relationships I cherished and found most helpful on my journey. I don't think there is a perfect fund structure in venture capital. There are many ways to do this and firms have been successful pursuing different approaches, but small funds are my strong preference and I think create the best alignment between entrepreneurs, fund managers, and LPs. Fred has written some excellent posts about this here and here.
Thesis-driven investing is important because it reflects that you know who you are and what you stand for. I also think it's also an entrepreneurial style of investing because you are painting a picture of how you think the world will unfold over the next 5-10 years and what you want to happen, and then strategically using financial capital as a tool to realize that vision with like minded entrepreneurs. A strong thesis helps Founders understand how an investor thinks and what motivates them beyond financial returns. Being generalist means that we can maneuver across social applications, marketplaces, web3, fintech, health, education, climate and more. This enables serendipitous things to happen in portfolio construction and for people to transfer learnings across all these different areas. A lot of the most compelling and exciting opportunities happen at the intersection of different fields and being generalist equips you to play at these intersections, which are often at the edge.
It was very important for me to join somewhere where partners work together as a collective. USV has long prided itself on being an equal partnership. I think this is the ideal model that creates a set of aligned incentives across the firm, and I fervently believe that incentives drive behavior. When there are no politics or people vying for a bigger slice of a pie, magic happens. When things are done collaboratively and equally, everyone roots for each other and the only winner is the team. This means that everyone is all in on every investment because everyone has a meaningful and vested interest in the success of a company and entrepreneur. When people work with USV they get the whole firm and that is quite rare and special.
Andy's tweet was less than 280 characters but it is loaded with meaning. The implications of these defining characteristics determine how the firm works and how an entrepreneur experiences USV, and they're one of the major reasons why I'm here today.
For the last several weeks I’ve tried to use Perplexity as my default search engine on mobile. I’ve enjoyed the experience more than Google and ChatGPT and I’m going to stick with it for now. I don’t know if my usage will last for a long time, mainly because I think other search applications will quickly innovate on user experience and that for the first time in decades this will be a hot and competitive market.
One of the new behaviors I noticed for myself was that I now like to use voice as an input to search. I’ve always been a typer, especially on mobile. But new AI powered search results actually improve as my queries become much more specific and detailed, and voice is a more seamless and natural way to make this happen. Instead of a quick text blurb, a conversational approach to search now yields superior results.
Voice as a part of UX has been around for a long time (eg Siri), but I think we are about to see it explode in usage. A key part of that is the movement to natural language as the fuel by which we make software do things for us. I no longer think of voice as just an input, I think of conversation as the new UX. This leaves many open questions, like will people be speaking out loud to their personal devices all day long? Is that preferable to being hunched over our phones tapping away? Will we be comfortable expressing our private interactions with software out loud?
My intuition is that in an era where a lot of digital experiences (particularly non media or entertainment based ones) are abstracted to voice interactions, we are going to witness a lot of behavior change at a mass population level. We are also going to see a lot of creative people start opening up new experiences within voice as an interface the same way we saw people innovate on UX on our mobile screens. Perhaps one of the early impactful things AI will do is free us from the glow of our physical devices.
Even though I just joined the firm, I've been connectedto it for my whole career. At tumblr I had the privilege to join board meetings as a 22 year old where I watched and learned from Brad where he was a board director. That's when I learned that "good board members listen first, then talk." I have worked with Andy since 2010 when he became GroupMe's first lead investor at betaworks. For the past decade I've continued to learn from him on the board of Splice which was founded by my dear friend and longtime business partner, Steve Martocci, who is a two-time USV founder. So much of what I wrote about in this Helpful Boards post I picked up from working (and seeing Phish shows) with Andy for nearly 15 continuous years. Over the past year, I've been fortunate to spend time with Rebecca and Nick and see how they work with Founders - and I've listened to those Founders proudly sing their praises. I have also co-invested with USV in numerous startups and have been an LP since 2014. This is a special firm filled with remarkable people.
Earlier in my career I'd often look at people in the valley that I admired (ie Founders, CEOs and Investors) and wonder how they got where they were. What I've come to understand is that they were active participants in growing networks that constantly paid it forward and deeply invested in relationships over long periods of time. It's a very unique thing to come of age in a growing ecosystem. When I started at tumblr, most everyone in NYC tech could get together at the OG Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. The community was tight-knit and a lot of people who were actively engaged in it are still around today. I fondly remember how Steve and I would run around trying to meet smart people while carving out a space for ourselves as hungry entrepreneurs. A lot of the connections I made back then are some of the most special relationships I have now. In many ways, every opportunity I've had is a function of the relationships I've built along the way. And as this NYC (and now global) tech ecosystem has grown, so too has the surface area for fun and serendipitous things to happen.
I'm looking forward to this new chapter and continuing to invest in the relationships that make life fun and rewarding while building new ones with great people inside and outside this special ecosystem. Over the past year when I was prioritizing the things that were most important to me when considering what to do next, number one was making sure I was working with people I could continuously learn from and have a ton of fun with along the way. I'm lucky to make that a reality thanks to the entire team at USV and the important relationships in my life that have supported me on this journey.
