Fred Wilson & Brad Burnham (Union Square Ventures)
Episode publishedPodcast: The Slow HunchThe Slow Hunch
Transcript preview
Preview only
It's been twenty or twenty two years since you started USV. You've been investing for decades even before that. You've been doing this for a long time, have had a lot of success. Jared posted a picture on Twitter a couple weeks ago of of the two of you sitting back to back in two offices, two rooms in our office with the caption, like, these two guys are always the first two here in the morning, which is true. People always often ask me,
why are you guys still here? Well, for me, venture capital is a little bit of a crutch. I'm very curious, but I'm a little lazy in terms of doing the work to learn something. And, venture capital allows me to learn all these new things without having to do a lot of work. And then, of course, that's supercharged by all the founders who come in and explain Yeah. A really deep domain. I can't get that anywhere else. I could potentially go get it at another venture firm, but I don't know why I would wanna do that. I already have one, so, like, why do I need to go get another one? But, like, I can'
you're sitting across the table from an entrepreneur who's been thinking deeply about a problem for a long time, you can go, no, no, no. I get that part. Tell me about this. I don't get this part. And so it just zeroes you right in on, and it just accelerates your learning. And so same story. It's incredible privilege to be able to, you know, sit with smart people, talk about really interesting things. At my point in my career, as I'm trying to step back, I like to say smart people, cool things, don't take any to dos, which is, you know, a great spot
to be in. Yeah. It it is really a wonderful thing to be able to, I mean, almost interrogate. And I realize when when I'm with founders, I kind of do that. I realize that that's my UI. To interrogate a founder, that's for me the greatest way to learn. It's it like you said, Brad, it's a real privilege because they're only doing that because we can write them a check. They're not coming in to educate us out of the goodness of their hearts, but that's what we get from it. And it doesn't get old. Does not get old.
Welcome back to the Slow Hunch podcast. And this week is a special one for me joined by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, my partners at Union Square Ventures and the two that founded USV back in 02/2003. We, in this conversation, get into, the history of their relationship, the history of the firm, the history of the technology arcs that they've been following for the last forty or so years of their their careers. And we weave together a lot of hunches and themes and threads of the the Internet, the tech ecosystem, New York City venture, platforms, protocols, AI, and where it's all going today. S
don't you start, Brad? I'm
not sure that was fair, but I will try. So Brad Burnham, been a partner at USB for, as we found out today, twenty two years. And before that, I was a partner at AT and T Ventures, and before that, I did a bunch of different things for AT and T. The slow hunch that, I have been following is that there is something about information and the technology that enables the flow of information that is empowering to people and is fundamentally transformative in many different ways. Something that I've thought about probably since college where I studied political science and political theory and unders
slowly, for my entire career. I'm Fred Wilson and Brad and I founded USV together, I guess, twenty two years ago. Although, I think that's a little bit incorrect because I think it was more like the February that we really decided that we were gonna do it. And I
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.