No. 86
Fred Wilson
Managing Partner
Union Square Ventures
Twitter: @FredWilson
Thought Leader...
When Fred Wilson speaks, people listen. When he invests in a startup, careers are made. A managing partner at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, which manages $450 million across three funds, Wilson has backed such up-and-comers as audio-hosting service SoundCloud, crowd-funding site Kickstarter and social music service Turntable.fm. Although he's usually wary of startups that deal with licensed content, he wrote on his blog, AVC, that he "was sold in about five minutes" after using Turntable.fm. Union Square has also invested in Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr. Wilson is one of venture capital's more philosophic players. AVC is required reading for tech investors-and as a hub of thoughtful and passionate discourse, it has few peers. One recent post, " Scarcity Is a Shitty Business Model," was a screed against the movie studio strategy of releasing titles through select channels that elicited more than 500 comments. No wonder he made Billboard's Tumblr Top 30 and Twitter 140 lists in 2011.-
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