Fred Wilson

I am a VC

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

I took a walk around the Union Square neighborhood a couple of Fridays ago with our new partner @mignano and we recorded it so everyone can listen to our conversation. We talked about the past, present, and future of startups, VC, and NYC.

[Michael Mignano @mignano]

Fred Wilson is one of the greatest VCs of all time. He is also my new partner at @USV and I'm lucky to say that. We've known each other for years, but becoming partners felt like a reason to get to know him even better.

So a few weeks ago, we walked around Union Square and caught up about what @fredwilson has learned over nearly 40 years of VC, how AI may be making the profession obsolete, how to build an investment thesis, why he believes the Knicks will win the NBA title this year, and a few of his long held grudges.

Here's a video of that conversation, set at Union Square, Madman Espresso, the USV office, and Leon's on Broadway.

Chapters:

3:22 - That time Fred wrecked Mike on Twitter
6:01 - Pre-Internet VC in NYC
9:50 - Early Internet Investing and Raising for Flatiron Partners
11:59 - The Dot-com Crash Killed Fred’s First Firm
14:28 - Fred’s Grudge Against Coffee Shop
16:35 - How to Pick the Right Team at Right Time
18:28 - AVC blog, Gawker’s Nick Denton, https://t.co/UTWtducKEc
20:44 - Jim Kramer invented Tweeting
21:46 - Why Fred Bet on Twitter Early
23:39 - Building Agents on Claude Code and Tasklet
26:20 - Claude Mythos and Doomerism
27:27 - The Original USV Thesis
29:19 - Network Effects and Brad’s Thesis
31:29 - Coinbase: Thesis, Investment, Outcome
33:18 - Investing in Decentralized AI
34:59 - Open Source AI
36:55 - AI Kill Zone: Legal AI is Dead, Energy Investments
42:37 - USV Agents Will Replace Its Partners
47:00 - Are VC’s building themselves out of a job?
48:30 - Leon’s, NYC’s New Tech Watering Hole
50:52 - Generative Art
53:18 - SOLIENNE: AI Artist trained by Kristi Coronado
54:25 - What About AI Scares Fred
55:40 - Societal Backlash to AI
58:10 - Advice to Early Career VCs: There’s More Risk in Not Doing Deals
1:00:48 - Fred’s Biggest Regrets: Saying No Because of Price
1:04:17 - Fred’s Bold Prediction for the Knicks and the Mets

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

@getcode Pls connect my Twitter account

CodeAccount:6Cf4VzvXs2G25RqjXe4XGmpPKiet8Ru2kZ19fWS1YWPg:F7i7uZqVrNXu6LjkjriE1w:5gcq7Jp1psQguvpBXgh82oi6XKf7JrTnZDqmig2Z4qtiPUWpjnrLFZ5tKAQA77QoEk1JpxYrJi5326HvVq9AAxBN

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

/fin

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

Hi Everyone. This Twitter account has been dormant, except when it got hacked last year, for the last eighteen months. I've been sharing my thoughts on tech, startups, VC, music, life, etc onchain at Farcaster. If you still want to hear from me on that stuff, come follow me there

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

I wrote a post, the second in a series about moving my Internet presence onchain, explaining my move from Twitter to Farcaster today https://t.co/bXzVUY1eMq

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

@jimhirshfield .xyz is the new .com. web3 is the new web2. You gotta leave the old and get with the new if you want to stay ahead in this business

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

Hi Everyone. Here is a detailed explanation of the account takeover hack that happened on this account this week. https://t.co/XPphwGjblQ

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

/ fin

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

I am sorry that my mistakes exposed all of you to this scam. I am hoping that by detailing what happened others can avoid being duped as I was.

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

/fin

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

Hi Everyone. As many of you know, this account was taken over by a hacker on Tuesday and they ran an NFT scam on it. I feel terrible about that and am sorry for anyone who was scammed.

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

Getting hacked sucks. It's now happened to me a few times and each time I learn something and get a bit smarter. But it still sucks.

[Sam Altman @sama]

very hard to do something novel for the first time; orders of magnitude easier to copy something that is known to be possible.

conviction is either extremely difficult, or free.

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

@EricMRoseman I like Lime and Dott.

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

@aweissman @MarieDOLLE The Icarus effect

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

@pi_stachioo @joshhart Yeah. We would love to take you out to Quaker anytime Josh

[Fred Wilson @fredwilson]

@TaliaGold @aleximm Congratulations!!!