Co-Founder and Venture Partner at Union Square Ventures (USV)
Check size: USV states that the firm writes $1 million to $30 million checks from the earliest stages onward. It does not publish Brad's personal range or authority; investments are discussed by the full partnership and decided collectively without a vote.
Brad's published investing work centers on preserving the internet's permissionless, generative character. He has backed open communications and data infrastructure, decentralized protocols with incentive-aligned funding models, community fiber networks that challenge access monopolies, and data-driven media platforms entering a market transition. The common thread is reducing gatekeeper control while creating networks whose users, developers, and communities share in expanding value.
Explain which gatekeeper or bottleneck controls access, data, distribution, or economics today and how the proposed network removes it. Show why openness produces more innovation without destroying the business model; map contributor and user incentives, governance, regulatory design, and value capture. For mature or follow-on opportunities, show the market opening and operating evidence that justify increasing commitment.
Open shared infrastructure, passionate contributor communities, protocol-level changes, business models that distribute network value, companies challenging entrenched gatekeepers, defensible legal and regulatory design for genuinely new mechanisms, and teams with long-term commitment to building infrastructure others can extend.
His writing argues against vertically integrated gatekeepers, monopoly extraction from user-contributed data, closed access networks, pay-to-play distribution, and token structures that evade hard regulatory design. It also suggests caution when a market transition has not yet reached customer adoption or when a network lacks a mechanism for broad participation and value sharing.
Identify who controls access, data, distribution, or economics, how that power constrains users and builders, and which open layer can make permissionless entry possible.
Test whether the people providing, consuming, and developing network value receive durable incentives without forcing a shared protocol into a monopoly-equity extraction model.
For a mechanism outside established categories, pair the technical and economic design with credible legal work rather than treating jurisdictional ambiguity as the strategy.
Increase commitment when a previously early market shows a clear adoption inflection supported by accelerating revenue, profitability, or other operating evidence.
A long-held portfolio position can merit increased growth investment when customer behavior shifts, the market opens, and measurable sales and profitability confirm adoption.
Open protocols and crypto incentives can finance shared data infrastructure, counter application-layer gatekeepers, reward network contributors, and preserve permissionless innovation when paired with responsible legal design.
Open community fiber can be both a strong business and critical civic infrastructure by challenging access monopolies and preserving unfiltered internet access for applications, workers, and local economies.
+ 207 more investments. View fund →