Fred Wilson (financier)
Encyclopedia
Fred Wilson is a New York
-based venture capitalist (active since 1987) and a prominent blogger. Due to his successful investment track record and community involvement, he is recognized as a leading voice of the venture capital finance community in New York. TheFunded.com, a social networking site for technology entrepreneurs, rated him their favorite venture capitalist in 2007.
Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures
, a New York City
-based venture capital
firm with investments in Web 2.0
companies such as Twitter
, Tumblr
, Foursquare, Bug Labs
, Meetup, Zynga
, Covestor
, del.icio.us
, Etsy
, FeedBurner
, Heyzap
, Indeed.com
, Tacoda
, Oddcast
, Disqus
, Zemanta
, and Clickable.
In 1996, Wilson co-founded Flatiron Partners with his partner Jerry Colonna
. Flatiron, named after the Flatiron District, became a successful, primarily follow-on investment fund in the New York City area, with investments in notable Dot-com bubble
successes and failures including Alacra
, comScore
Networks, Yoyodyne
, Geocities
, Kozmo.com
, New York Times Digital, PlanetOut, Return Path, Scout electromedia
, Standard Media International, Starmedia
, and VitaminShoppe.com. The firm's 1996 fund capitalized at $150 million with two investors: SOFTBANK Technology Ventures and Chase Capital Partners, the private-equity arm of Chase Manhattan Corp. The firm later raised another fund capitalized at $500 million with Chase Capital Partners as the sole active LP. In 2001, Wilson and Colonna essentially shut down Flatiron (although they still manage what remains of its portfolio). Wilson offered a blunt assessment in July 2005 in Business 2.0
, "Yeah, boy, we really screwed up a bunch of things."
Prior to Flatiron, he was at Euclid Partners. Wilson has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Wharton School
of the University of Pennsylvania
. He is married with three children and lives in New York City.
Wilson publishes a blog called AVC: musings of a VC in NYC. As of March 24, 2011, its monthly readership is approximately 280,000, according to Google Analytics. Wilson publishes one post per day, almost always on a topic related to venture capital, entrepreneurship or the Internet. His blog has the highest readership of any blog written by a venture capitalist and his posts usually attract more than 100 comments per post.
Wilson is also an active philanthropist and community advocate having worked on initiatives including the redevelopment of Union Square and Madison Square in New York City. He is also a board member of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects individuals to classrooms in need. Currently, Wilson is involved in the Pier 40 Partnership.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based venture capitalist (active since 1987) and a prominent blogger. Due to his successful investment track record and community involvement, he is recognized as a leading voice of the venture capital finance community in New York. TheFunded.com, a social networking site for technology entrepreneurs, rated him their favorite venture capitalist in 2007.
Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures is a venture capital firm based in New York City, New York, United States.The firm was founded by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham in 2004...
, a New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firm with investments in Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
companies such as Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, Tumblr
Tumblr
Tumblr is a website and microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. The site ranks as the 10th...
, Foursquare, Bug Labs
Bug Labs
Bug Labs is a technology company headquartered in New York City that develops and sells open-source hardware peripherals for rapid prototyping of electronic devices. The company developed a Lego-like hardware platform that technology enthusiasts, hobbyists and engineers can use to create their own...
, Meetup, Zynga
Zynga
Zynga is a social network game developer located in San Francisco, United States. The company develops browser-based games that work both stand-alone and as application widgets on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace....
, Covestor
Covestor
Covestor is an online Investment Management platform that allows you to mirror the real trades of successful individual or Professional Investors...
, del.icio.us
Del.icio.us
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and by the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs...
, Etsy
Etsy
Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies. These items cover a wide range including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, edibles, bath & beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks and toys. Many individuals also sell craft supplies like beads,...
, FeedBurner
FeedBurner
FeedBurner is a web feed management provider launched in 2004. FeedBurner was founded by Dick Costolo, Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe. Costolo, a University of Michigan graduate, became CEO of Twitter in 2010...
, Heyzap
Heyzap
Heyzap is a social discovery platform for mobile and online games and the largest social network for mobile gamers. Heyzap is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2009 by Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund. Heyzap provides users with a way to check-in to their favorite games, discover games and join...
, Indeed.com
Indeed.com
Indeed.com is a metasearch engine for job listings launched in November 2004. As a single-topic search engine, it is also an example of vertical search. The site aggregates job listings from thousands of websites, including job boards, newspapers, associations, and company career pages. Job seekers...
, Tacoda
Tacoda
Tacoda was an advertising network company and is based in the United States. It was acquired by AOL on July 23, 2007....
, Oddcast
Oddcast
Edcast is an audio encoder that can be used to create Internet streams of varying types. Currently, mp3, ogg vorbis, ogg flac, as well as AAC+ are supported. And this application can be used to stream to both icecast2 and SHOUTcast servers.Edcast is a free and open source encoder that is...
, Disqus
Disqus
Disqus is an online discussion and commenting service for websites and online communities that uses a networked platform. The company’s platform includes various features, such as social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and...
, Zemanta
Zemanta
Zemanta is a content suggestion engine for bloggers and other content creators.- Features :Zemanta analyzes user-generated content using natural language processing and semantic search technology to suggest pictures, tags and links to related articles.Zemanta suggests content from Wikipedia,...
, and Clickable.
In 1996, Wilson co-founded Flatiron Partners with his partner Jerry Colonna
Jerry Colonna (financier)
Jerry Colonna was among the best-known venture capitalists in New York City and played a prominent part in the early development of Silicon Alley. He is currently a life and business coach and serves on the Board of Trustees at Naropa University.-Early life:...
. Flatiron, named after the Flatiron District, became a successful, primarily follow-on investment fund in the New York City area, with investments in notable Dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
successes and failures including Alacra
Alacra
Alacra Inc is a privately owned company that specializes in the aggregation of large information databases to customers that utilize multiple resources in research....
, comScore
ComScore
comScore is a Internet marketing research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior....
Networks, Yoyodyne
Yoyodyne
__notoc__Yoyodyne is the name of several companies in fiction and real life.Yoyodyne is a fictional defense contractor introduced in Thomas Pynchon's V. and featured prominently in his novel The Crying of Lot 49 . Described in the latter book as "a giant of the aerospace industry", Yoyodyne was...
, Geocities
GeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service, currently available only in Japan.GeoCities was originally founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet . In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to place their web pages...
, Kozmo.com
Kozmo.com
Kozmo.com was a venture-capital-driven online company that promised free one-hour delivery of "videos, games, dvds, music, mags, books, food, basics & more" and Starbucks coffee in several major cities in the United States. It was founded by young investment bankers Joseph Park, Yong Kang and...
, New York Times Digital, PlanetOut, Return Path, Scout electromedia
Scout electromedia
Scout Electromedia was a late 1990s wireless consumer product company based in San Francisco.The company created the modo handheld wireless device which delivered up-to-the-minute entertainment information to urban youth in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, although the demise of the...
, Standard Media International, Starmedia
Starmedia
StarMedia is a leading Latin Internet brand, co-founded in August 1996 by Fernando Espuelas and Jack Chen as the first pan-regional Internet portal for Spanish and Portuguese speaking audiences...
, and VitaminShoppe.com. The firm's 1996 fund capitalized at $150 million with two investors: SOFTBANK Technology Ventures and Chase Capital Partners, the private-equity arm of Chase Manhattan Corp. The firm later raised another fund capitalized at $500 million with Chase Capital Partners as the sole active LP. In 2001, Wilson and Colonna essentially shut down Flatiron (although they still manage what remains of its portfolio). Wilson offered a blunt assessment in July 2005 in Business 2.0
Business 2.0
Business 2.0 was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the "New Economy"...
, "Yeah, boy, we really screwed up a bunch of things."
Prior to Flatiron, he was at Euclid Partners. Wilson has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Wharton School
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
The Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wharton was the world’s first collegiate business school and the first business school in the United States...
of the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. He is married with three children and lives in New York City.
Wilson publishes a blog called AVC: musings of a VC in NYC. As of March 24, 2011, its monthly readership is approximately 280,000, according to Google Analytics. Wilson publishes one post per day, almost always on a topic related to venture capital, entrepreneurship or the Internet. His blog has the highest readership of any blog written by a venture capitalist and his posts usually attract more than 100 comments per post.
Wilson is also an active philanthropist and community advocate having worked on initiatives including the redevelopment of Union Square and Madison Square in New York City. He is also a board member of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects individuals to classrooms in need. Currently, Wilson is involved in the Pier 40 Partnership.
External links
- A VC Blog - Fred Wilson's blog.
- Web 2.0 Conference Speaker Biography
- "A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets on Young Firms", New York Times September 21, 2008, a short profile of Union Square Ventures and Fred Wilson.