USV added a new partner today. Her name is Rebecca Kaden and she introduced herself to our world on the USV blog just now. Rebecca joins a team of fifteen people; our network team, our analysts, and our fantastic administrative team. We are all excited to have her join us.
It took us a year to find the right person to add to our partnership. We have only added three people to our partnership in the fourteen-year history of USV. Albert joined USV in 2008, after doing a two-year stint as a Venture Partner at USV, and after spending almost a decade doing early-stage investing in a number of firms. John joined USV in 2010 to help us with the newly formed Opportunity Fund after spending about a decade in private equity and public market and angel investing. And Andy joined USV in 2012 with thirteen years of VC experience at Dawntreader and as a founding partner of Betaworks.
Albert and Andy took over running USV a year and a half ago and led this search. They did a great job. With Rebecca, we now have the start of the next generation after Andy and Albert.
A venture capital firm, at least our venture capital firm, is at its core, a group of like-minded investors who come together around a shared investment thesis to work collaboratively to help entrepreneurs build companies. When you get the people right, as we have over the last fourteen years, it is magic. When you get the people wrong. it sucks for everyone, including the entrepreneurs. So we took this search very seriously and I am confident that we found the right person in Rebecca. She is experienced, loved by the entrepreneurs she works with, curious, funny, and has the personality and temperament to fit into our partnership. I am excited to work with her every day.
Rebecca grew up in a venture capital firm as did I. She spent almost six years at Maveron, a firm we deeply respect. Maveron, like USV, has stayed small, continued to focus on seed and Series A investments, and has stuck to its thesis around consumer investing. Everyone knows what a Maveron deal is and what it isn’t. That is my favorite kind of venture capital firm. Venture capital is an apprenticeship business and Rebecca is very fortunate to have learned the business from her partners at Maveron.
I would be remiss if I did not address the diversity issue. A number of us have been public about the fact that we wanted to add some diversity into our partnership and that is what we have done. And we are not done. We will continue to look for diversity across our organization and that means diversity of all kinds. We are not doing this for optics or public pressure. We believe that different perspectives, life experiences, and orientations in a partnership will lead to better decisions. But that said, this will take time. We don’t add partners very often and when we do, we are very careful about who we add. We probably won’t look very different a year from now but we will probably look very different a decade from now.
Each partner who has joined USV has done two things very well. First they have figured how to operate inside of our shared investment thesis. And second they have figured out how to stretch it. Albert taught us that developer platforms like MongoDB, Twilio, and Stripe could be networks and that stretching of our thesis has worked out exceptionally well. John taught us that financial services like Lending Club and C2FO and eShares were networks and that stretching of our thesis has worked out equally well. Andy has helped us understand how networks like Figure1, Nurx, and Science Exchange are impacting health care and that is turning out to be extremely promising. Rebecca will stretch our thesis some more and we are excited to work with her and support her as she does that.
If you didn’t click over to the USV blog and read Rebecca’s introduction of herself already, I would encourage to you do that now. She ends it with her email address and a call out to entrepreneurs to come work with her at USV. As it should be.
