After dealing with venture capital investments for more than a decade, Union Square Ventures has been one of the many companies in the industry which encountered a frequent, but rarely discussed, issue when investing in private companies.
The equity ownership tables have been mostly managed in spreadsheets, and the information related to updates in the structure has been mostly disseminated using email messages. It is a time consuming and frustrating issue which has been addressed by a couple of companies.
The multimillion-dollar New York-based venture capital company Union Square Ventures has made public in a blog post that it has become one of the principal investors in eShares. According to USV, the company founded by Henry Ward and Manu Kumar at K9 Ventures is the leader in this space.
While no numbers have been disclosed, Union Square Ventures has been joined in the Series A round of funding by Spark Capital and a number of investors from the seed round.
Other companies which have been developing similar solutions include Capshare, which was launched in 2012 and went independent in 2013. The firm secured $1 million from Kickstart Seed Fund, Draper Associates and former SkullCandy CEO Jeremy Andrus.
Union Square Ventures' Managing Director Fred Wilson shared the news on his Twitter profile, explaining the problems in the sector and the rationale behind the investment in a series of 10 posts.
10/ if you have a Startup , invest in startups or work at startups, check out https://t.co/tExXUU8hk7 to see what cap tables should be like
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) January 4, 2015One of the partners in Union Square Ventures, John Buttrick, underlined that the firm is aiming to get most of the companies in its portfolio to adopt eShares, a move which isn’t surprising considering the investment.
