# The Short King Is Dead, Long Live The Short King

By [AVC](https://avc.xyz) · 2026-10-12

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Last week [USV announced two new funds](https://www.usv.com/writing/the-next-chapter-of-usv), a core fund of $500mm and an opportunity fund of $400mm. We did a fair bit of media around the announcement and the message is "we got bigger so we can lead the rounds we want to lead." That's a very important thing in our business and we are excited to be able to lead larger rounds. We are doing that right now in a few investments and it feels great.

Over the weekend, I read [Kyle Harrison's post](https://x.com/kwharrison13/status/2108931049506083092) in which he says that the USV announcement, when combined with a similar announcement by Benchmark earlier this year, mark the end of "VC's Short Kings."

Kyle makes a number of very astute observations in his post and I agree with much of his analysis of the current trends in the VC business. But I disagree with where he lands at the end.

Kyle suggests that USV has become yet another "Capital Agglomerator" that seeks to play the game of "funding what's fundable" and feeding the "round after round after round" beast instead of just focusing on building great businesses.

We may have left his "Cottage Keeper" segment. But USV has most definitely not become a firm that is focused first and foremost on aggregating capital and playing the round after round after round game.

As Kyle mentioned in his post, I said on t[he Sourcery podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYH4fKKtSPw), "_I think if our biggest winners are in the single-digit billions given our fund size and our ownership, we can produce really really healthy returns for our partners.”_

Duolingo and Etsy are two amazing companies that USV provided seed capital to and then participated in the follow-on rounds. Duolingo and Etsy are both publicly traded and are both valued in the $7-8bn range. Both investments would return the entire new core fund we just raised based on how much ownership we bought in each.

Of course we want to fund companies that can be worth $100bn or possibly a trillion dollars. We don't want to rule that out and being able to step up and write a larger check into seeds and Series A rounds should help us be in that mix.

But we are not focused on that and only that. We want to fund the best teams working in our four thesis areas, which are laid out [near the bottom of our fund announcement post](https://www.usv.com/writing/the-next-chapter-of-usv).

I don't believe in having to make binary choices. I think you can choose to be something different while also being able to "play the game on the field" as my partner Rebecca called it in the Sourcery podcast. That's what we are doing at USV and if that means we are no longer "Short Kings" so be it. I still think we are the best investment partner a founder can find in the entire VC industry and I am very proud to be that.

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*Originally published on [AVC](https://avc.xyz/the-short-king-is-dead-long-live-the-short-king)*