In a blog post, Union Square Ventures‘ Brad Burnham just announced that the firm has invested in DuckDuckGo, a startup building a nifty search engine with less clutter and more privacy.
Scott Banister, Jim Young, Jeff Miller, Joshua Schachter, Kal Vepuri, Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg also invested in the round, writes founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg. → Read More
Demand for private company shares declined in the second quarter versus the first quarter but was up sharply year-over-year, according to a new report released today by SecondMarket. The market for private company stock saw $112 million in transactions last quarter, versus $156 million in the first quarter, or down 39 percent sequentially. On an annual basis, however, it was up 120 percent over the second quarter of 2010, which saw $51 million in transactions. And the $268 million worth of transactions in the first half of 2011, was up 75 percent from the first half of 2010 .
For the first time, SecondMarket also ranked the top VC firms based on which ones have the most portfolio companies on its 100 most-watched list. → Read More
To kick off TechCrunch Disrupt today in New York, Erick Schonfeld took the stage to interview investor Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures. For background, Wilson was early investor in Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Etsy and is also a prolific blogger.
Wilson sort of revealed that Union Square Ventures has sold some of its stock in Twitter. When Schonfeld asked if he sold stock in Twitter, he said he didn’t really want to comment on that but he then he added that generally speaking he wouldn’t argue with news reports out there that he has sold Twitter stock. → Read More
In Silicon Valley it’s not just who you invest in that matters– it’s also when you invest in them. The earlier the investment, the riskier the bet. But the more jawdropping the returns if the company hits it big. It’s so lopsided, that typically just 5% of those unsure early bets create some 95% of the entire venture industry’s returns. Miss one of them, and it haunts you for years. Snag it, and you can brag for even longer. This simple reality is precisely what makes the venture business hard, and the justification for why partners make such huge fees.
So what’s up with the surge of the strongest early stage firms jumping so heavily into late stage mega-deal fray? Have the Valley’s superstars lost sight of these rules or are the rules changing?
Earlier this year, we wrote a lot about the shift in power at the early stages with the rise of super angels, but you could argue there are far greater ripple effects to this new late stage frenzy. That’s not only true for the Valley, it’s true for the stock market. And you could argue, those ripple effects are less well-understood. → Read More
Back in December, we spotted an SEC filing indicating that Union Square Ventures was raising between $135 million and $200 million for a new “Opportunity Fund.” The offering wasn’t complete and the firm could not discuss it, but today partner Fred Wilson explains in a post what the new fund (which ended up being a $165 million fund) is all about.
The fund is not about going after different opportunities than Union Square has been focussed on since the outset. It is that the size of the opportunity Union Square is focussed on—which Wilson describes “Internet services that create large networks”—is larger than ever. And the new fund will provide more dry powder to invest in network startups, whether they need $25,000 or $25 million. Wilson explains: → Read More
Union Square Ventures is raising $200 million for a new fund called the Union Square Ventures Opportunity Fund LP. According to an SEC filing, the VC firm already raised $135 million for the fund from 19 investors. The last time Union Square raised money was for its $156 million Union Square Ventures 2008 LP fund.
Union Square Ventures is the leading early stage VC firm in New York City led by Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham, and Albert Wenger. Its portfolio includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, Tumblr, Boxee, Disqus, Etsy, Clickable, and Indeed. → Read More
Exclusive – Zemanta, which assists bloggers by providing tips, suggesting content and helping them promote their contributions to the world, has recently secured its largest venture capital round to date. Previous investors Union Square Ventures and Eden Ventures have injected another $3 million into the European startup, bringing its total of capital raised since its inception to roughly $6 million.
The startup, which won Seedcamp back in 2007, says it now expects to be able to reach profitability without the need for further capital injections. → Read More
Crafty commerce site Etsy just raised another $20 million in its fifth venture round (that would be the Series E). Index Ventures is the new investor leading the round, with partner Danny Rimer getting an observer’s seat on the board. (The board is made up of founder Rob Kalin, Caterina Fake, Accel partner Jim Breyer and Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson). Previous investors Accel and Hubert Burda Media put in some money as well in this round.
The round gives Etsy a pre-money valuation of just under $300 million, about triple the valuation it got during its last, $27 million round in January, 2008. Most of the shares sold—nearly $14 million of the $20 million—were secondary shares held by some of the early investors. But unlike other rounds we’ve seen lately, this wasn’t a liquidity event for founders. Kalin says he did not sell any shares, nor did any employees. → Read More
You can always count on Hunch founder Chris Dixon for interesting Tweets. He just sent out this one:
turns out patent trolling might not pay. Intellectual Ventures has negative 78% return.http://bit.ly/bSfamC
The link is a PDf download of a document from the University of Texas Management Company listing all of its private investments in venture funds and private equity funds, along with their internal rates of return (IRR). One of the worst performers is Intellectual Ventures, the patent portfolio fund started by Nathan Myrhvold that has a reputation for patent extortion. One of its funds, the Invention Development Fund I, has a negative 73 percent IRR (Dixon mistakenly thought it was negative 78 percent, but close enough). Another fund, the Invention Investment Fund II, has a negative 10 percent return. The two funds combined are delivering a negative 36.66 percent IRR for the University of Texas. → Read More
Foursquare, the geo-mobile startup everybody tried to invest in or buy, now has officially closed its Series B funding round. The “wire transfer heard ’round the world,” as board member Bryce Roberts puts it, was for $20 million, giving the company a $95 million pre-money valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, as previously reported, with existing investors Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures participating.
CEO Dennis Crowley says the fundraising was “a lot of work” and plans to use the money to staff up and keep adding to the product. “It’s all about building a team that can churn out new product,” he tells me. “We’ve been dreaming up these things for the past 10 years and now we have the opportunity to build them all.” The money will also help pay for more office space. His 27 employees are already too big for the startup’s current New York City offices, and Foursquare is about to move into new digs upstairs in the same building. “It’s awesome,” he says, “we can hear them building it upstairs right now!” He plans on hiring a lot more engineers. → Read More
A months long fundraising process for Foursquare is in its last stages, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and Andreessen Horowitz looks to be preparing to check-in to Foursquare to take an investor badge.
The company has delayed committing to new venture capital as they considered buyout offers – negotiations went deep with both Yahoo and Facebook, and possibly Microsoft. The Yahoo discussions ended weeks ago, and Facebook passed on an acquisition earlier this week, we’ve heard. → Read More
Microblogging startup Tumblr, based out of New York, has raised $5 million more from the same investors who’d already bankrolled the company with a little over $5 million over two previous rounds, namely Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.
The financing round, Tumblr’s third, was first reported by MediaMemo and comes at a time when the three-year-old startup is starting to push a bunch of buttons to try and generate revenue from the lightweight blog publishing and management service. → Read More
As we alluded to two days ago, the location-based social network Foursquare has just raised its first round of funding. PaidContent found out about the seed round through an SEC document, and we’ve confirmed the round with the company.
As expected, Union Square Ventures is one of the investors, but also participating in the round is O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and some angel investors, that co-founder Dennis Crowley was not ready to reveal at this point. The round is in fact $1.35 million. → Read More
Boxee, the media center software startup, has won a lot of fans with its open approach to streaming content. And as a result it has won some more money, to the tune of a $6 million second round, led by Boston’s General Catalyst Partners. The new money will be used for growth: Both expanding the team and expanding the service’s reach in the market, we’re told.
But why now? After all, Boxee raised its first round of funding just 8 months ago, a $4 million round with Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital investing. “We’ve seen a lot of momentum over the past couple of months. It seemed like it made sense to go ahead [with a new round],” Boxee’s new head of marketing Andrew Kippen tells us. → Read More
