Union Square Ventures (USV) is a thesis-driven, early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham and headquartered at 817 Broadway in New York City. USV invests at the edge of large markets being transformed by technological and societal pressures, historically backing large networks of engaged users that are differentiated through user experience and defensible through network effects, and more recently companies that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being. The firm invests primarily at Seed and Series A across three strategies — a Core fund, a Climate fund, and an Opportunity (later-stage) fund — with check sizes typically ranging from roughly $1M at seed to the low-to-mid single-digit millions at Series A. USV runs a small, collegial partnership and focuses on social media, marketplaces, developer tools, learning/education, health, fintech, web3/decentralized protocols, energy, and climate. It reports roughly $1.9B in assets under management across 14 funds. Notable investments include Twitter, Etsy, Coinbase, Stripe, Cloudflare, MongoDB, Twilio, Duolingo, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, SoundCloud, and Carta.
Firms are ranked by cumulative portfolio strength — how many highly-rated API companies they've backed, weighted by tier across composite quality and agent-readiness. The averages below are a secondary read on the typical company in the book.
Union Square Ventures has 206 portfolio companies tracked on the APIs.io network, of which 203 (99%) publish APIs indexed here.
Its highest-rated API providers on the network are Stripe, Twilio, Cloudflare, Dwolla, Etsy.
Portfolio on the Network
Portfolio companies that publish APIs indexed on APIs.io, grouped by their
API Evangelist rating. Exemplar and Strong are expanded by default.
Exemplar2Complete, well-documented, and agent-ready
The 197 portfolio companies with APIs in the catalog, backed by
Union Square Ventures, scored on the Kin Score. Every figure below is computed from
the catalog — nothing here is written.
A facet is averaged over the members that carry it, not over the whole cohort — the
“Scored” column is that count. Averaging an absent facet as zero would score our own
coverage gaps as the providers’ posture.
What this cohort publishes
Artifact
This cohort
Catalog
Difference
MCP server (any)
16%
16%
0
MCP server (first-party)
6%
7%
-1
Agent Skills
0%
0%
0
OAuth scopes
12%
9%
+3
Security
89%
88%
+1
Arazzo workflows
3%
2%
+1
Governance rules
12%
13%
-1
mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.
This roster declares 203 members; 197
resolve to a provider in the catalog and 197 carry a score
(100%). The figures above describe the scored members only.Generated from the catalog build of
25 August 2026, across 26891
providers, using the same computation served by the
APIs.io cohort API. Briefs are published for rosters of
5 or more scored providers; below that a distribution is not meaningful.
aid: union-square-ventures
name: Union Square Ventures
description: >-
Union Square Ventures (USV) is a thesis-driven, early-stage venture capital
firm founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham and headquartered at 817
Broadway in New York City. USV invests at the edge of large markets being
transformed by technological and societal pressures, historically backing
large networks of engaged users that are differentiated through user
experience and defensible through network effects, and more recently companies
that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being. The firm invests
primarily at Seed and Series A across three strategies — a Core fund, a
Climate fund, and an Opportunity (later-stage) fund — with check sizes
typically ranging from roughly $1M at seed to the low-to-mid single-digit
millions at Series A. USV runs a small, collegial partnership and focuses on
social media, marketplaces, developer tools, learning/education, health,
fintech, web3/decentralized protocols, energy, and climate. It reports roughly
$1.9B in assets under management across 14 funds. Notable investments include
Twitter, Etsy, Coinbase, Stripe, Cloudflare, MongoDB, Twilio, Duolingo,
Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, SoundCloud, and Carta.
x-type: venture-capital
x-category: Venture Capital
deliveryModel:
model: unknown
open_source: false
commercial: false
callable_host: false
label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
confidence: low
source:
- none
generated: '2026-08-28'
method: derived
accessModel:
pricing: unknown
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: false
public: false
label: Unknown
confidence: low
source: []
generated: '2026-07-22'
method: derived
image: https://www.usv.com/favicon.ico
tags:
- Venture Capital
- Seed
- Series A
- Fintech
- Marketplaces
- Developer Tools
- Web3
- Climate
- New York
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis: []
common:
- type: Website
url: https://www.usv.com/
- type: Portfolio
url: https://www.usv.com/companies
- type: Portfolio
url: portfolio/union-square-ventures-portfolio.yml
- type: Team
url: https://www.usv.com/people/
- type: Team
url: team/union-square-ventures-team.yml
- type: InvestmentThesis
url: https://www.usv.com/about/
- type: InvestmentThesis
url: https://www.usv.com/idea/usv-investment-thesis/
- type: Blog
url: https://www.usv.com/writing/
- type: Jobs
url: https://jobs.usv.com/
- type: Contact
url: mailto:info@usv.com
- type: Crunchbase
url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/union-square-ventures
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/union-square-ventures
- type: Twitter
url: https://twitter.com/usv
- type: Features
data:
- 'Stage: Seed and Series A (early-stage), plus later-stage via the Opportunity fund'
- 'Typical check: ~$1M at seed, low-to-mid single-digit millions at Series A'
- 'Sectors: social media, marketplaces, developer tools, learning/education, health, fintech, web3/decentralized protocols, energy, climate'
- 'Geography: United States (NYC-based), with global investments including Europe'
- 'AUM: ~$1.9B across 14 funds (self-reported)'
- 'Strategies: Core fund, Climate fund, Opportunity (later-stage) fund'
- 'Founded: 2003'
- 'Founders: Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham'
- 'HQ: 817 Broadway, 14th Floor, New York, NY 10003'
sources:
- https://www.usv.com/about/
- https://www.usv.com/idea/usv-investment-thesis/
- https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/union-square-ventures
updated: '2026-07-17'
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
url: https://apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
url: http://apisjson.org
- FN: Union Square Ventures
url: https://www.usv.com/