Fred Wilson (financier)
| Fred Wilson | |
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Fred Wilson 2009
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| Born | August 20, 1961 |
| Residence | New York City |
| Alma mater | MIT, Wharton School |
| Known for | Blogging, venture capital |
Fred Wilson (born August 20, 1961) is an American businessman, venture capitalist and blogger. 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, Zynga, Kickstarter, and 10gen.
Fred Wilson began his career as an associate and then became a General Partner at Euclid Partners. He worked at Euclid Partners from 1987 to 1996.
In 1996 Wilson and Jerry Colonna began Flatiron Partners, which was named after the Flatiron District. Based in New York City, it grew into an investment fund that focused primarily on follow-on investing, 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 shut down Flatiron.
In 2004 Wilson and Brad Burnham founded Union Square Ventures and have since invested in companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Bug Labs, Meetup, Zynga, Covestor, del.icio.us, Etsy, FeedBurner, Heyzap, Indeed.com, Tacoda, Oddcast, Disqus, Zemanta, Work Market, and Clickable. TheFunded.com, a social networking site for technology entrepreneurs, rated him their favorite venture capitalist in 2007.
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