My partner John has a post up on USV this morning talking about our new fund, USV 2016, which we quietly raised earlier this year. We added our final portfolio company in USV 2014 last week and we are making our first investment in USV 2016 this week, led by John. In John’s post he addresses some changes we are making at USV, most notably the elevation of Albert and Andy to managing partners of our firm. This role has been held by Brad and me since we started USV in 2003.
This sounds like a big change and in some ways it is. Andy and Albert are the future of USV, at least the near term future. They have been providing this leadership role for a while now but it is time to formally acknowledge it. John, Brad, and I remain actively involved in making investments, managing investments, and driving our investment strategy. We all plan to make investments in the 2016 fund, as John is doing this week.
The VC business is a long term game and VC funds have a long time horizon, ten years in most cases, but generally they get extended for a few years more as it takes a long time to liquidate these funds. We are on our second extension on our 2004 fund and I doubt it will be totally wrapped up until the latter part of this decade. What this means for a venture capital firm is that you need to anticipate succession on a longer time horizon. At some point, Brad, John, and I will not want to sign up for investing a new fund. But well before that happens, we need to establish the new leadership at USV and start building the next generation. We have done the former and at some point in the next several years we will start thinking about the latter. Again, we are doing all of this over a long time horizon as is appropriate for our kind of business.
When Brad and I started USV, there were a bunch of things we did not want to do. One of them was stick around too long, taking too much carry, and holding on to too much control. We have seen so many VCs do this at the firms they started and we did not want that to happen at USV. With this change, we are showing ourselves, our partners, and our LPs that we were serious about that.
What we are not doing is retiring. I know there are rumors out there that I have retired, I am retiring, or I will soon retire. I don’t really care about them and have ignored them for the past year or so. But our portfolio companies hear them and it bothers them. And I understand that. So rest assured, I am not retiring. I am handing over the keys to the car and getting into the back seat. It feels good. And I am so excited to see where Albert and Andy drive the car. I know it will be to amazing places. It already is.