Inside Union Square Ventures: Lessons from Rebecca Kaden

So, USV, a small collection of very thesis-driven partners, to do things a little bit differently. So, six partners, equal partnership, what we think of as low-velocity, high-conviction investing. So we don't do a lot of things, but we spend a lot of time on the things we do, and we spend a lot of time as a group developing really particular thesis around markets. And sometimes they're really broad horizontal thesis that we think kind of span across industries and categories, and then we take that horizontal thesis and we pull the threads, and we pull the thread and think about what markets that most applies to. How sharp can we make the tip of the spear of that thesis until we're really describing something quite specific.

And then we try to balance what I think of as kind of one of the biggest tensions in venture: patience and impatience. How can we have strong hustle and always feel like we're, you know, need to be out there and find the right thing, but also really patient around finding the right thing for our thesis and not jumping until we do. First thesis USV articulated was large networks of engaged users, which is network effects. In some ways, we've just been rearticulating that since, around kind of different times that are evolving. The way we're thinking about it now is investing in markets that are in moments of structural change. So I think about it as where are tectonic plates already moving and doing it from the edge. And when we think about the edge, what we mean is often avoiding gatekeepers, finding direct paths into markets that have been marked by big industries getting in the way. And through that, oftentimes moving access to data from the institution to the individual or end user. And so creating ways to access unique data sets and build flywheels around them. Where can you build something that by doing it you're gaining interesting and unique data that then promotes and is self-fulfilling around building a moated product in the market.