Jared Hecht

Hecht majored in political science at Columbia University. He has said that after graduating in 2009 he joined Tumblr, where at 22 he was able to sit in on board meetings; the Tumblr board director at the time was USV co-founder Brad BurnhamBrad BurnhamBrad Burnham is an American venture capitalist who co-founded the New York venture capital firm Union Square Ventures (USV) with Fred Wilson in 2003, after working at AT&T and its venture capital arm and co-founding the ad technology company TACODA; he has long publicly advocated net neutrality and opposed the abuse of software patents. Since October 2026 he has moved to continuing support of USV and is no longer listed on its core investment team.Open the full entry.⁠[1][2][3]

In May 2010, Hecht, then at Tumblr, and his friend Steve Martocci, then at Gilt Groupe, built a prototype of the group texting app GroupMe at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in New York. Encouraged by their bosses, the two went full-time in the first week of July, and Tumblr president John Maloney became an angel investor in GroupMe. GroupMe launched on August 25, announcing $850,000 in funding the same day.⁠[4][5][4][4][5][5]

About a year after launch, GroupMe was acquired by Skype for $85 million and continued to operate independently in New York. Hecht said the team had anticipated, about six months in, being attacked by large companies. In the fall of 2013, he and Martocci left Skype to start their own new companies, each holding equity in the other’s venture.⁠[6][6][7]

After leaving Skype, Hecht founded Fundera, a marketplace that helps small businesses get loans from non-bank lenders, with co-founders Rohan Deshpande, a former Gilt Groupe engineer, and Andres Moran, a former Outbrain director. He said the idea came from watching a relative who ran a chain of restaurants struggle to get a bank loan. By February 2014, Fundera had raised $3.4 million from investors including First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry, SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, and David Tisch.⁠[7][7][7][7]

Hecht recalled that when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, Fundera lost roughly 80% of its revenue overnight and cut 25% of its staff; the board then recommended a new valuation, repricing every employee option grant above it, and giving every employee a new grant. In the fourth quarter of that year, the personal finance platform NerdWallet acquired Fundera, with part of the consideration tied to performance metrics; Hecht said board members Frank Rotman and Scott Feldman proposed that a meaningful piece of the earn-out go to common shareholders, and every preferred investor agreed.⁠[8][8][8][9][8][8][8][8]

January 3, 2023 was Hecht’s last day at Fundera/NerdWallet. He then set himself a rule of making no decisions for six to nine months and took a year off, exploring several startup ideas, including helping companies build search engine optimization programs, rolling up internet businesses with durable product-market fit, and preventing heart disease, but did not start a new company.⁠[10][11][11]

On January 4, 2024, Hecht announced on the USV blog that he was joining the firm as a venture partner. He wrote that he had been a USV limited partner since 2014 and had co-invested with USV many times; USV partner Andy WeissmanAndy WeissmanAndy Weissman is a New York venture capitalist who has been a partner at Union Square Ventures (USV) since 2011 and earlier co-founded the technology company and investment platform betaworks; when USV announced its new funds in October 2026, he moved to continuing support of the firm and its portfolio companies and is no longer listed on the core investment team.Open the full entry had led GroupMe’s first round as an investor at Betaworks in 2010, and the two later served together on the board of Splice, founded by Martocci. At USV he wrote about new kinds of social networks in the AI era and co-wrote, with Nick GrossmanNick GrossmanNick Grossman is an American venture capitalist and a general partner at the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), focusing on technologies such as crypto networks and AI agents that could reshape large markets. He began his career in urban planning and open-source civic technology and joined USV in 2012.Open the full entry, the post explaining USV’s investment in the decentralized social protocol Farcaster.⁠[3][3][3][3][12][13]

In 2025, Hecht began working on a new product with Avi, the head of engineering at his previous company. In mid-April 2026, he and colleagues he had worked with for more than a decade began testing the social app Postcards with friends and family: users give the app photos, voice notes, and text, and AI turns them into stylized “postcards” shared with people they actually know. The app’s developer on the App Store is Biographer, Inc. He is also building Biographer, a project that began as a gift to his parents to help capture their life stories; in July 2026 it launched Biographer Wiki, a private-by-default page that only its owner can edit.⁠[2][14][14][15][16][17][17][17]

In announcing its $900 million in new funds, USV wrote that its newest team members, general partner Michael MignanoMichael MignanoMichael Mignano is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, co-founder and CEO of the podcasting platform Anchor, which Spotify acquired in 2019. He was a partner at Lightspeed and since 2026 has been a general partner at the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV).Open the full entry, venture partner Hecht, and product advisory partner Scott BelskyScott BelskyScott Belsky is an American entrepreneur, author and early-stage investor who co-founded the creative portfolio platform Behance; after Adobe acquired it in 2012 he served as Adobe’s chief product officer and chief strategy officer. Since 2025 he has been a partner at the independent film studio A24 and founder of A24 Labs, and since September 2026 also a Product Advisory Partner at Union Square Ventures (USV).Open the full entry, had helped the firm adopt a builder’s mindset, and that they would form its core investment team going forward together with Fred WilsonFred WilsonFred Wilson is an American venture capitalist, co-founder and partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), and earlier co-founder, with Jerry Colonna, of the internet investment firm Flatiron Partners. He has written the blog AVC since 2003, chaired Etsy’s board for many years, and is a director of Coinbase.Open the full entry, Rebecca KadenRebecca KadenRebecca Kaden is an American venture capitalist and a managing partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV). She joined the firm in 2017 and since 2026 has been one of its four active general partners.Open the full entry, Nick Grossman, and Nikhil Raman.⁠[18][18][18]

Personal website: https://jared.xyz/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1][19]

X: Public account: https://x.com/jaredhecht (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

Union Square Ventures: Official website: https://www.usv.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

Postcards Are Fun: App Store page: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/postcards-are-fun/id6764377933 (opens in a new window)⁠[20]