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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, Etsy and MongoDB.[1]
Fred Wilson | |
|---|---|
 Fred Wilson 2009 | |
| Born | August 20, 1961 |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Blogging, venture capital |
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.[citation needed]
In 1996 Wilson and Jerry Colonna began Flatiron Partners, which was named after the Flatiron District.[citation needed] 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, The New York Times Digital, PlanetOut, Return Path, Scout electromedia, Standard Media International, Starmedia, Favemail, and VitaminShoppe.com.[2] 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.[3] In 2001 Wilson and Colonna shut down Flatiron.[4]
In 2004 Wilson and Brad Burnham founded Union Square Ventures. TheFunded.com, a social networking site for technology entrepreneurs, rated him their favorite venture capitalist in 2007.[5]
Wilson was a judge for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's NYC BigApps competition in NYC.[6]
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Wilson publishes a blog called AVC: musings of a VC in NYC.[7] Wilson publishes one post per day, usually on a topic related to venture capital entrepreneurship or the Internet.[8]
Wilson attended high school at James I. O'Neill High School. Wilson is married to Joanne Wilson, a prominent angel investor and author of the Gotham Gal blog.[9] They have three children and live in New York City and Venice Beach. All of his children attended Wesleyan University.
Wilson has a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.[10]
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.[citation needed] He is also a board member of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects individuals to classrooms in need. Currently, Wilson is involved in the Pier 40 Partnership.[11]
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