I am a VC
Joined March 2007
- Tweets 19,910
- Following 1,347
- Followers 641,058
- Likes 50,148
617 Photos and videos
Apr 29
I took a walk around the Union Square neighborhood a couple of Fridays ago with our new partner @mignano and we recorded it so everyone can listen to our conversation. We talked about the past, present, and future of startups, VC, and NYC.
Apr 29
Fred Wilson is one of the greatest VCs of all time. He is also my new partner at @USV and I'm lucky to say that. We've known each other for years, but becoming partners felt like a reason to get to know him even better.
So a few weeks ago, we walked around Union Square and caught up about what @fredwilson has learned over nearly 40 years of VC, how AI may be making the profession obsolete, how to build an investment thesis, why he believes the Knicks will win the NBA title this year, and a few of his long held grudges.
Here's a video of that conversation, set at Union Square, Madman Espresso, the USV office, and Leon's on Broadway.
Chapters:
3:22 - That time Fred wrecked Mike on Twitter
6:01 - Pre-Internet VC in NYC
9:50 - Early Internet Investing and Raising for Flatiron Partners
11:59 - The Dot-com Crash Killed Fred’s First Firm
14:28 - Fred’s Grudge Against Coffee Shop
16:35 - How to Pick the Right Team at Right Time
18:28 - AVC blog, Gawker’s Nick Denton, TypePad.com
20:44 - Jim Kramer invented Tweeting
21:46 - Why Fred Bet on Twitter Early
23:39 - Building Agents on Claude Code and Tasklet
26:20 - Claude Mythos and Doomerism
27:27 - The Original USV Thesis
29:19 - Network Effects and Brad’s Thesis
31:29 - Coinbase: Thesis, Investment, Outcome
33:18 - Investing in Decentralized AI
34:59 - Open Source AI
36:55 - AI Kill Zone: Legal AI is Dead, Energy Investments
42:37 - USV Agents Will Replace Its Partners
47:00 - Are VC’s building themselves out of a job?
48:30 - Leon’s, NYC’s New Tech Watering Hole
50:52 - Generative Art
53:18 - SOLIENNE: AI Artist trained by Kristi Coronado
54:25 - What About AI Scares Fred
55:40 - Societal Backlash to AI
58:10 - Advice to Early Career VCs: There’s More Risk in Not Doing Deals
1:00:48 - Fred’s Biggest Regrets: Saying No Because of Price
1:04:17 - Fred’s Bold Prediction for the Knicks and the Mets
23
11
172
55,404
21 May 2024
Hi Everyone. This Twitter account has been dormant, except when it got hacked last year, for the last eighteen months. I've been sharing my thoughts on tech, startups, VC, music, life, etc onchain at Farcaster. If you still want to hear from me on that stuff, come follow me there
89
36
297
129,088
21 May 2024
I wrote a post, the second in a series about moving my Internet presence onchain, explaining my move from Twitter to Farcaster today avc.xyz/ive-moved-onchain-co…
23
11
102
40,926
9 Feb 2024
Hi Everyone. Here is a detailed explanation of the account takeover hack that happened on this account this week. avc.xyz/anatomy-of-a-twitter…
49
25
184
97,378
9 Feb 2024
I am sorry that my mistakes exposed all of you to this scam. I am hoping that by detailing what happened others can avoid being duped as I was.
10
2
29
33,030
8 Feb 2024
Hi Everyone. As many of you know, this account was taken over by a hacker on Tuesday and they ran an NFT scam on it. I feel terrible about that and am sorry for anyone who was scammed.
18
7
158
72,961
8 Feb 2024
Getting hacked sucks. It's now happened to me a few times and each time I learn something and get a bit smarter. But it still sucks.
4
2
26
24,661
Fred Wilson retweeted
10 Sep 2023
very hard to do something novel for the first time; orders of magnitude easier to copy something that is known to be possible.
conviction is either extremely difficult, or free.
446
777
6,942
878,961
Fred Wilson retweeted
15 Dec 2022
If you ever sent an unsupported ERC20 token to @Coinbase and had it disappear into the *ahem* ether, you can now easily recover it and transfer it to a self custody wallet like @CoinbaseWallet
15 Dec 2022
Introducing Coinbase’s new ERC-20 self-service asset recovery tool. A safe, simple, and secure way for our customers to recover almost 4,000 unsupported ERC-20 tokens.
128
14
195
86,325
Fred Wilson retweeted
14 Dec 2022
ISO someone at Google who can help me fix a broken list link. It's a great list (and it's public), help me! 🙏🙏🙏
105
8
96
Fred Wilson retweeted
19 Sep 2022
Reminder applications for the @usv analyst program are due today at 5pm Eastern time
Announcing the 2022 USV Analyst Program application usv.com/writing/2022/09/usv-…
118
6
97
15 Sep 2022
I just awoke to the news that The Merge was completed successfully a few hours ago. Congratulations and thanks to everyone in the ETH community for making this happen. Here's why this is so important avc.mirror.xyz/yruxkf5lnefLd…
113
52
227
13 Sep 2022
1/ It is always flattering to be ranked first on a list/survey but of course there is sample bias and all sorts of other reasons to be skeptical of these results. We do survey the founders we back at USV and had a founder NPS of 96 this year (up from 92 over the last three years)
13 Sep 2022
Union Square Ventures tops Founder's Choice VC rankings with Bowery Capital, Bonfire Ventures, Initialized Capital, and Y Combinator close behind newcomer.co/p/founders-choic…
15
8
133
13 Sep 2022
4/ we are a small firm and wish we could back more founders/teams but it also is likely that we deliver on the promise because we don't take too much on
3
1
63