Introducing Tracked.com
At Union Square Ventures, we seldom invest in a company before it launches publicly. The exception is when we have the opportunity to back an experienced entrepreneur with a strong team and a strong product vision. That is exactly what happened with Tracked.com. So we now find ourselves in the unusual position of announcing the public launch of an investment we made some time ago. A year ago, Mike Yavonditte, a web veteran based in New York who had worked at Ziff-Davis, Juno, Alta Vista and Interactive Corporation, and who had most recently gone wire to wire as the CEO...
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We recently wrote about our search for native mobile applications, which we defined as applications that simply were not possible previously (as opposed to making something that already exists online accessible via mobile). We have also long been interested in gameplay (Zynga and Heyzap) and in local information (outside.in). We were therefore thrilled to find an opportunity that combines all three and are pleased to announce our investment in Foursquare. Foursquare allows you to "check...
ContinueChris and Malcolm are both wrong
Many of you are familiar with dust up between Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell that was touched off by Malcolm's review of Chris's new book, Free: The Future of Radical Price. [UPDATE: Free is no longer free. The link to Chris's book has been retired. You can find Chris's book on Amazon.]
ContinueBring the world to your event
Union Square Ventures hosted an event called Hacking Education that sparked conversations far beyond the day of the event, and did so in a way where we gave up control of the conversation and allowed it to spread. Steven Johnson recently wrote his thoughts about how Twitter will change the way we live, and within that article explained the process by which we shared our small event with anyone who was interested, and explained its...
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Online casual games are a large and rapidly growing form of entertainment. According to Comscore over 85 million people play casual games every month in the US alone and minutes spent playing grew a staggering 42% from 2008 to 2009. Casual games originated as downloadable PC games. Based mostly on free trials with payment for full play, the industry grew to over $1 billion (published numbers vary widely and some estimates are significantly higher). The...
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