About a year ago, the USV partnership kicked off a process to articulate an overarching thesis for how we invest across all of the sectors we are active in. Over the years, we have broadened the aperture of where we invest but have approached each sector with a similar angle. We wanted to find the words to articulate that angle and put them on the home page of our website and front and center in our minds.
That process culminated in a blog post that Nick wrote and posted yesterday. You should go read that entire post. It is excellent. But to summarize, we chose these words to describe what we invest in at USV:
USV invests at the edge of large markets being transformed by technological and societal pressures
Each word in that sentence was chosen for a reason but two of them are worth calling out:
Edge - we want to be investing at the edge of markets. We have found that attacking the status quo with a full frontal assault is difficult. Making an end run around it is a lot easier.
Societal - most people think VCs invest in technological changes. We have found that our greatest returns come from societal changes.
A single sentence can say a lot and we think this one does. If you want the detail and context behind it, go read Nick's post.
