Nick Grossman

Grossman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, earned a degree in urban studies from Stanford University, and began his career in urban planning. He has said he learned what he knows about technology from generous people on the internet and by viewing web page source code.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Grossman ran an incubator for startups built on open source and open data. In February 2010, the incubator unit he worked in, TOPP Labs, was renamed Civic Works, a name he explained was meant to evoke the public realm and public service; that April, its parent organization, The Open Planning Project (TOPP), was renamed OpenPlans.⁠[2][3][3][3][4]

On December 5, 2011, Civic Commons’ founding executive director, Andrew McLaughlin, left for Tumblr and Grossman took over as executive director; the organization had launched with funding that May and helped government agencies open-source their technology. Three days later he joined the MIT Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media as a visiting scholar, working with the lab’s new director, Joi Ito, and the center’s director, Ethan Zuckerman.⁠[5][5][5][6][6]

In 2012, Grossman joined Union Square Ventures, later serving as general manager of special projects and working on policy. He wrote extensively on his blog about “Regulation 2.0,” and in 2015 noted that nearly every network USV had invested in had a trust and safety team, that these teams were rapidly innovating on policy, and that web services are akin to governments. He has also held an academic affiliation at Harvard Law School.⁠[1][7][8][9][8][8][8][1]

Grossman and Dani Grant wrote on the USV blog against the common view in the Web 3.0 community that the field was in an infrastructure phase and should build base chains and tools before apps; they argued that apps and infrastructure drive each other in alternating cycles rather than in two successive phases.⁠[10][10]

USV announced $450 million in new fund commitments and promoted Grossman to partner, with a focus on crypto networks and blockchain technology.⁠[7][7]

In 2024, Grossman launched The Slow Hunch, a podcast about the twisty pathways from idea fragments to big things, which had 18 episodes as of October 2026, with guests including Cloudflare co-founder Matthew Prince, Uniswap’s MC Lader and Marvin Ammori, Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, and 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 and 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.⁠[11][9][2][2][2][9]

Grossman wrote that over the past year USV had roughly doubled its team by building AI agents that research companies, review legal documents, write code, and maintain internal databases, all on the Tasklet platform; USV co-led Tasklet’s $20 million financing with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and others.⁠[12][12][12]

On the USV blog, Grossman set out the “Rebel Alliance” investment thesis: the AI opportunity is too big and too important to be owned by any one company, and the ecosystem forming around the agentic AI stack is not just competing but structurally positioned to lead.⁠[13][13]

Grossman, together with Fred Wilson, 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, and 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, announced USV’s latest funds, totaling $900 million across early-stage and opportunity strategies; the four are the general partners of the 2026 funds.⁠[14][15][15][16]

Grossman has written on his personal website since 2006, with 450 posts as of October 2026. He has said he is most interested in how new ways of building things let new networks and business models form. His notable posts include “The butter thesis” (2019), which describes an unwritten USV theme of backing products with exceptionally smooth experiences; “Bitcoin as battery” (2021), on the relationship between crypto networks and energy; and “Adversarial interoperability” (2019), which connects the digital-rights community’s push to re-decentralize the web with the work of the crypto community.⁠[9][2][17][18][9]

Personal website: https://www.nickgrossman.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

X: Public account: https://x.com/nickgrossman (opens in a new window)⁠[2][19]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickgrossman (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

Union Square Ventures: Official website: https://www.usv.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]