Union Square Ventures

Union Square Ventures, known universally as USV, is a New York-based early-stage venture firm founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham and built around a famously thesis-driven investment approach. USV’s thesis has evolved across multiple iterations and now centers on backing trusted brands that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols. The firm has historically been most associated with internet-native marketplaces, protocols, and consumer brands including Twitter, Etsy, Tumblr, Coinbase, and Stripe, but it has built a meaningful and increasingly active healthcare and well-being practice over the past decade with explicit focus on what it calls ‘access to wellbeing.’

USV’s healthcare investments are concentrated in consumer-facing and infrastructure layers of digital health rather than therapeutics, devices, or healthcare services. The firm has explicitly stated its thesis that digital processes will drive down cost, increase access, and improve outcomes of medical care, and most of its healthcare investments are applications such as Clue (women’s health and reproductive tracking), Nurx (DTC reproductive and sexual health telehealth), and Modern Fertility (consumer fertility testing). USV has also been an early backer of Abridge, the AI-driven medical scribe and clinical documentation platform, which fits the firm’s thesis on what it calls ‘consumer EHR 2.0’ and patient-controlled health data.

The partnership is unusually small relative to peers and runs as a flat-ish team of generalist partners with deep specialty interests. Senior partners include Fred Wilson (founding partner, less active in new investing now), Brad Burnham (founding partner), Albert Wenger (managing partner with deep policy interests), Andy Weissman, Rebecca Kaden (consumer-focused partner), and a smaller bench of partners and principals. Rebecca Kaden in particular has anchored several of USV’s healthcare and well-being investments and brings a consumer brand operating background. The firm runs at a deliberately small scale and writes a tightly curated portfolio of new investments per year.

Check sizes run from $1 million at seed up to $20 million at Series A and B, with the capacity to lead and co-lead at all early stages. The firm prefers to lead at Series A and is one of the more active New York early-stage firms in healthcare and well-being. Geographic scope is global with US and European centers of gravity, and the firm has been increasingly active in European deals over the past decade.

Founders who should approach USV are consumer and consumer-internet founders building digital health, women’s health, sexual health, mental health, and patient-data-control platforms with a clear thesis on access and network effects. The firm is particularly well suited for founders who can articulate a thesis-aligned narrative about expanding access to well-being, leveraging networks or platforms, and building consumer trust at scale. Founders building therapeutics, devices that require Class III FDA approval, B2B-only payer software without a consumer wedge, or pure healthcare services will not find the strongest fit. USV is decisively a thesis-driven generalist with a consumer and access focus; founders should align their pitch to that thesis or pitch other firms.

Entry path runs through warm introductions from portfolio CEOs, the broader USV network of operators and founders, and peer New York and consumer venture firms including Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau, and Forerunner. The partnership is highly accessible through writing; Fred Wilson’s AVC blog has been one of the most influential venture publications for two decades, and other USV partners maintain public writing presences. Cold inbound is read and the firm has a relatively open posture toward direct outreach, particularly when the founder has a thesis-aligned story.

In a pitch, lead with the thesis alignment, the consumer wedge, the network or platform dynamic, and the access narrative. USV partners think deeply about why a particular company expands access to knowledge, capital, or well-being and how networks and protocols compound over time. They will probe your distribution strategy, your consumer trust dynamics, and your unit economics, and they will be more interested in the long-term thesis than in short-term traction milestones. The firm’s added value is most powerful when founders use the USV intellectual platform: thesis discussions with partners, introductions to peer thesis-driven investors, and the firm’s deep network of consumer and platform operators. Founders building thesis-aligned consumer health and access-driven well-being companies will find USV one of the most intellectually rigorous and consumer-savvy tier-one partners in the category.