At Union Square Ventures, we pride ourselves on our transparency and openness. Wednesday's Airbnb post and Paul Graham's followup posting of our email thread on that opportunity is a good example of where being open benefits everyone involved, from Airbnb, to Y Combinator, to Union Square Ventures, and mostly to entrepreneurs out there who have always been curious what really goes on.
But there are plenty of times when we are not open. If an entrepreneur comes in and pitches us on an investment, we don't blog about it. We have all sorts of things going on in our portfolio right now that we'd love to talk about but obviously we can't and won't. And when we make an investment that the people involved decide should be kept quiet, we are fully capable of doing that.
Today, I wrote a short blog post on USV.com about our portfolio company Kickstarter. We've been an investor in Kickstarter since the fall of 2009 but are only talking about it now that everyone involved is comfortable with making the investment public.
We prefer to be open and transparent, but that is not always the appropriate or desired posture. And when we are expected to be discreet, we are fully able to do that.
