We invest at the edge of large markets being transformed by technological and societal pressures
New York, NY
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- Following 504
- Followers 169,433
- Likes 4,771
The physical world is rapidly becoming the most valuable dataset, and there’s a whole stack being built around its capture. From energy and compute at the bottom to physical interfaces and applications at the top, here’s how we’re mapping companies creating Data At The Edge and bringing intelligence where it’s never existed before.
If you’re building at any layer of the stack, we’d love to speak with you.
ALT The stack bringing dark data into the light
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USV retweeted
Fun story of how we met @fredwilson and @uninsightful and how USV investment in fomo came together.
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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USV retweeted
feel so lucky to get to work with both of these guys every day @uninsightful @fredwilson
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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USV retweeted
for half of the things I do in my job on a daily basis, there's some old AVC post deeply relevant to it
so when I get Fred's take on something usually its more like "hey I know what your take on this topic was 10 yrs ago -- do you think this still holds"
was a fun hour riffing on some of these evergreen topics:
avc.com/2011/02/difficult-is…
avc.com/2017/05/investor-vcs…
some moments that stuck with me:
- I contend that most of the most important "networks" have already been built. Fred disagrees
- I contend that mega-VC has put immense pressure on the USV model and that non-operator investors are disadvantaged. Fred suggested both may be true but can be made up for by working harder
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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USV retweeted
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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USV retweeted
I spent three years sitting next to Nik and Fred - and still couldn’t be more excited for an opportunity to listen to them discuss venture!
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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USV retweeted
Introducing crypto on @Supertake.
Some of the biggest ideas of our time don't live on the stock market: Digital gold. Money moving onchain. Smart contracts rebuilding finance. A personal financial agent should be able to own the whole idea, wherever it lives.
Starting today, it can. Your takes can now hold 19 major coins, from bitcoin:native and ethereum:native to solana:So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112, right beside stocks and ETFs. Supertake adds a coin when your belief calls for one. And when the idea is the coin itself, it buys the coin, not a fund that tracks it. Real-money orders go through your own @coinbase or @RobinhoodApp account, with safety checks tuned for crypto's bigger swings watching around the clock, 24/7.
Available for all users, right now.
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USV retweeted
The thing I miss the most about working at @usv is the storytelling.
This interview is such a great peek under the hood at how smart people think through problems, adapt that thinking over time, and, most importantly -- what they think will happen next.
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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Nearly 40 years separate when @uninsightful and @fredwilson started investing in start ups.
Now they're doing it along side each other.
In their first recorded discussion they cover:
• What makes an investor worth listening to
• Building conviction before everyone agrees
• Why VCs come back after saying no
• Choosing investors in the age of megafunds
• What programmable biology opens up for founders
• Where USV gets it wrong
• What 40 years teaches you, and what it doesn’t
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
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USV retweeted
Introducing @Supertake Memory.
Earlier this week, we launched Supertake and shared our vision to equip everyone with the superpowers to invest in their own insights through frontier-level intelligence.
We believe everyone deserves their own personal financial agent, tightly aligned with their interests and working around the clock with the most powerful technology.
To do that right, Supertake needs to know you: your preferences, your beliefs, your intuitions, your history. The same things a world-class financial manager would learn, but only after many years.
Memory is a step in that direction. Supertake now remembers what you tell it, in every chat: your goals, your preferences, your limits, the calls you've made and why, even the nicknames you give your takes.
It carries all of that into every conversation, whether you're building a new take or checking on one, and it keeps track of where each conversation left off, so you don't have to repeat yourself. You also stay in control. Ask what it remembers, correct it, or tell it to forget, anytime.
With today's release, Supertake not only acts upon your insights, but begins to compound them.
Available for all users, right now.
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USV retweeted
Civ/acc brought to you by @GrittRobotics
Gritt AI is now installing 1 MW of solar capacity per day at 4× the speed of a typical installation crew. And our daily installation rate keeps accelerating.
At our active site, each day’s installation adds enough solar capacity to meet roughly 200 homes’ annual electricity needs once operational.
That’s the milestone: every day, more infrastructure built. Every increase in speed, more capacity to meet America’s growing energy demand.
Solar is just the beginning. Next, we aim to bring Gritt’s construction superintelligence to data centers, water treatment plants, and pipelines.
Our mission: enable humanity to build centuries’ worth of infrastructure in decades.
Civilization. Accelerated.
@Jason @andrewbeebe @albertwenger @hayleybay @CleanVC @rebeccakaden @Rajil @GrittRobotics
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Gritt AI is now installing 1 MW of solar capacity per day at 4× the speed of a typical installation crew. And our daily installation rate keeps accelerating.
At our active site, each day’s installation adds enough solar capacity to meet roughly 200 homes’ annual electricity needs once operational.
That’s the milestone: every day, more infrastructure built. Every increase in speed, more capacity to meet America’s growing energy demand.
Solar is just the beginning. Next, we aim to bring Gritt’s construction superintelligence to data centers, water treatment plants, and pipelines.
Our mission: enable humanity to build centuries’ worth of infrastructure in decades.
Civilization. Accelerated.
@Jason @andrewbeebe @albertwenger @hayleybay @CleanVC @rebeccakaden @Rajil @GrittRobotics
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There are many threads that can be traced through our investment history. Don't Automate, Obliterate is one of the strongest.
Almost every @usv thesis over the last 20 years has been informed by a single HBR article from 1990: Don't Automate, Obliterate.
"Automate" = software that makes the old way faster
"Obliterate" = software that makes the old way unnecessary
One strengthens the position of incumbents. The other opens up the world to new classes of entrepreneurs and hands the public the power incumbents used to hold.
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USV retweeted
We've now all learned abundant energy is the core input in an intelligence boom. We're also on the precipice of a mobility boom--infusing the physical world with automation and intelligence means lots more things that autonomously move around. We've been investing @usv excitedly behind this.
The input here is motion systems: motors, gears, actuators, etc. Made closer, faster, cheaper, better. Leveraging software to make superior moving hardware.
I'm obsessed with finding the best teams building to meet this need (we've already invested in some greats and more soon to come...)
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USV retweeted
some thoughts on personal AI:
1/ Most people outside tech won't know where to start with agents and most of these tools miss the first-run delight that would show us why it's worth it. Just because chat windows are frictionless doesn't mean we should forgo good product education
2/ Where's the "recipes" layer, letting me fork or take inspo from other people's skills?
3/ I'm very pro-native UI over consolidating within the existing UI. I want threading, an inbox, notification preferences, etc
4/ I’d love a password vault-like product so I can manage and transfer my context across tools
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USV retweeted
icymi, we are actively building the @supertake dream team.
get in touch if you want to recreate personal finance for the agentic era. massive opportunity.
we have cash in the bank and founding-team equity to share.
jobs at supertake dot com
Introducing @Supertake, a new platform that transforms your unique takes on the world into real, shareable investment portfolios using frontier AI and trading agents.
Supertake makes it easy for anyone to invest in their ideas, even if they know nothing about investing.
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USV retweeted
We raised $97M in Series B funding round, led by TQ Ventures with Eclipse, Union Square Ventures, Giant Ventures, and seven other investors joining. Total funding to date: $173M. Full story below.
efficient.computer/resources…
#ElectronE1 #EnergyEfficiency
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One of the great opportunities in AI is making actionable expertise available to everyone.
@Supertake brings financial expertise and trading agents together so you can turn your ideas about the world into investments.
Join the waitlist today.
Introducing @Supertake, a new platform that transforms your unique takes on the world into real, shareable investment portfolios using frontier AI and trading agents.
Supertake makes it easy for anyone to invest in their ideas, even if they know nothing about investing.
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