New York-based venture capital firm Union Square Ventures has raised $429 million for two funds. The funds include $190.58 million from 113 LPs for USV 2019 and $238.22 million from 116 LPs for USV Opportunity 2019.
The combined funds add up to about $428.8 million, which is the largest raising of funds since the venture capital firm launched in 2003. In the past Union Square Ventures stuck with a small fund model. But these funds will make Union Square Ventures much more aggressive for larger scale deals. Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, Andrew Weissman, Rebecca Kaden, and John Buttrick of Union Square Ventures are listed in the documents for the fundraising.
Union Square Ventures has been one of the top returning venture capital funds since launching. For example, the venture capital firm saw several billion dollar exits like Zynga, Indeed, Tumblr, Twitter, Lending Club, Etsy, Stripe, Twilio, and MongoDB. And some of Union Square’s private portfolio companies are growing at a rapid pace, including Carta, DuckDuckGo, and Coinbase.
The venture capital firm is also setting up funds called USV Opportunity Investors 2019 with a target of $11.25 million and USV Investors 2019 LP with a target of $9 million. These funds might be used to grant a subset of limited partners such as portfolio company founders or the general partners of the firm with more favorable investing terms, according to Crunchbase.
Currently, Union Square Ventures has an active portfolio of 75 companies. This past year, Union Square invested in a number of technology companies like Dia&Co, Dapper Labs, Scroll, Algorand, Upgrade, Skillshare, Flip, Foursquare, and SigFig.
Union Square Ventures regularly promotes collaboration between its portfolio network of companies through the USV Network. “Due to this access, with every added node (i.e. company), our portfolio members become collectively smarter and better equipped to make the best decisions possible in their day-to-day. In this way, we hope to break down silos across companies and democratize access to knowledge about best practices in building businesses,” wrote Bethany Crystal in a blog post back in October 2017.
