Fred Wilson (born August 20, 1961) is an American businessman,

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

and blogger. Wilson is the co-founder of

Union Square Ventures Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, ...

, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

companies such as

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

Tumblr Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...

Foursquare Four square is a ball game. Four square may also refer to: Internet and entertainment * Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app * 4 Square (game show), ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show * 4 Square (TV series), ''4 Squ ...

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher known for its social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile an ...

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company with an emphasis on the selling of handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home decor, religious items, furni ...

and

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available, cross-platform, document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database product, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional database schema, schemas. Released in February 2009 by 10gen (now MongoDB ...

Career

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 The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan of New York City, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street (Manhattan), 23rd Street, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally ...

. 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 The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

successes and failures, including

Alacra Alacra, Inc. is a privately owned American company that provides information and workflow tools to financial institutions, corporations, and professional services firms. The company was founded as Data Downlink Corporation in 1996 by Steven Go ...

comScore Comscore, Inc. is an American-based global media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, advertising agencies, brand marketers, and publishers. History Comscore was founded in July 1999 in Resto ...

Networks, Yoyodyne,

Geocities GeoCities, later Yahoo! GeoCities, was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest, active from 1994 to 2009. GeoCities was started in November 1 ...

, Kozmo.com, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' Digital, PlanetOut, Return Path, Scout electromedia, Standard Media International,

Starmedia StarMedia (stylized as starMedia) is a Latin American 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. History During the do ...

, Favemail, 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

. TheFunded.com, a social networking site for technology entrepreneurs, rated him their favorite venture capitalist in 2007. Wilson was a judge for Mayor

Michael Bloomberg Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman and politician. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., and was its CEO from 1981 to 2001 and again from 2014 to 2023. He served as the 108th mayo ...

NYC BigApps NYC BigApps is an annual competition sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. It provides programmers, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs with access to municipal data sets to build technological products that address ...

competition in NYC.

Blogging

Wilson publishes a blog called AVC: musings of a VC in NYC. Wilson publishes one post per day, usually on a topic related to venture capital entrepreneurship or the Internet.

Personal life

Wilson attended high school at James I. O'Neill High School. Wilson is married to

Joanne Wilson Joanne Wilson (born 1961) is an American businesswoman and angel investor. She is known for backing female-founded companies. Biography Early life and education Joanne Wilson was born in 1961. Wilson studied at Simmons College in Boston, wher ...

, a prominent angel investor and author of the Gotham Gal blog. They have three children and live in New York City and Venice Beach. All of his children attended

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

. Wilson has a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from the

Wharton School The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...

of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. He is 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 DonorsChoose is a United States–based nonprofit organization that allows individuals to donate directly to Public school (government funded)#United States, public school classroom projects. The organization has been given Charity Navigator's hig ...

, an online charity that connects individuals to classrooms in need. Currently, Wilson is involved in the Pier 40 Partnership.

References

External links

Union Square VenturesA VC Blog
– Fred Wilson's blog. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Fred 1961 births Living people American bloggers American financiers American venture capitalists MIT School of Engineering alumni Wharton School alumni