Venture Partner at Union Square Ventures (USV)
Check size: USV's published firm range is $1 million to $30 million from earliest stage through follow-ons. No personal range is attributed to John, and the firm's investment decision is a collective discussion rather than an individual vote.
John's published investments apply a lawyer-investor lens to regulated markets where analog, repetitive infrastructure blocks access. His work favors portable financial identity, user-controlled credentials, digital-first insurance and legal workflows, and trusted financial brands that broaden affordable access to capital—particularly for underbanked consumers and long-tail merchants in Latin America.
Quantify who is excluded or burdened by the existing regulated workflow, then walk through the end-to-end replacement. Show licensing and compliance, underwriting or verification data, pricing, loss or fraud performance, user trust, distribution, unit economics, and portability. For emerging markets, demonstrate local financial infrastructure expertise and benefits for both consumers and merchants.
Large excluded populations, trusted digital distribution, portable user-controlled identity, regulatory and domain expertise, products that remove repeated paperwork, real-time underwriting or verification, merchant and consumer benefits in the same system, global teams, strong execution, and technology that digitizes an entire end-to-end regulated workflow.
His writing implies caution toward fintech that serves only already-privileged customers, identity systems without portability or compliance depth, financial products with predatory pricing, expansion without local infrastructure expertise, and point solutions that digitize one step while leaving the regulated workflow largely analog. These are inferred filters.
Test whether verified identity, accreditation, KYC, and AML attributes can be securely reused across institutions under user control without weakening compliance or privacy.
Measure whether a financial product simultaneously broadens fair consumer access and improves merchant conversion, order value, working capital, or digital adoption.
Map every paper, broker, verification, underwriting, servicing, and compliance step and determine whether the product truly replaces the workflow instead of adding another interface.
For emerging markets, verify local regulatory, capital-markets, payments, underwriting, distribution, and cultural expertise rather than extrapolating from a North American model.
Portable, user-controlled financial identity can eliminate repeated investor onboarding while satisfying KYC, AML, accreditation, and emerging DeFi compliance requirements.
Smartphone distribution and real-time credit scoring can broaden affordable consumer finance in Latin America while helping long-tail merchants grow conversion and order value.
A trusted digital bank can challenge concentrated incumbents and extend reasonably priced financial services to Brazil's large underbanked population.
Strong product, technology, data science, and service can digitize commercial insurance end to end and scale from an early barebones launch into a global strategic platform.
+ 207 more investments. View fund →