Rebecca Kaden is a Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures, a thesis-driven venture capital fund based in New York City. USV invests in early stage teams working on businesses that restructure markets in moments of transition by approaching them from the edge. Their portfolio includes Coinbase, Twitter, Etsy, MongoDB, Stripe, Duolingo, Abridge, Uniswap, and many others. Prior to joining the USV partnership, Rebecca was a General Partner at Maveron. She began her career as a journalist and received her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Language from Harvard and MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
At USV, we have a shared belief that constraints lead to creativity. Our thesis-driven approach is a perfect example of that. A thesis focuses the aperture. It's not a barrier to new and interesting ideas; it's a lens that filters opportunities and lets you approach them with a prepared mind.
It also puts the impetus on us to articulate, usually in writing, what we're looking for, and to put that out into the world. By constantly publishing our perspectives, we invite feedback and discourse that makes the ideas stronger.
We have also found that the experience of walking into a founder conversation with a strong, considered perspective on the market they're building in completely changes the tenor of the conversation and relationship. It goes from "tell me what you're doing" to "let's talk about where we're aligned, where we see things differently, and where the real opportunities are." Way more fun. Way more useful.
The key is calibration. A thesis can't be so narrow it boxes you in, but it has to create focus, provide useful filters, and stake out a perspective worth agreeing or disagreeing with. I think we've found that balance over time.
When I started in venture, I was focused on breadth: meet everyone, see everything, be everywhere. It was a whirlwind, a lot of fun, and a pretty effective way to build a foundation in an ecosystem that is very relationship-centric.
But over time, I’ve shifted far more to depth. Now I think about building real trust with the nodes of a network I'm most aligned with, while still constantly refreshing it. I've also gotten more intentional about who I'm cultivating relationships with and what it is I’m looking for in them. Who will give me honest, sharp feedback when I need to pressure-test an idea? Who has great deal taste and strong founder radar in markets I care about? who do I love working with on boards and want to find more opportunities to do so? And who do I just enjoy being around and makes the process more fun, fruitful, enjoyable?
That said, one thing I love about this industry is that it rewards hunger and energy and hustle — so I never stop meeting new people and expanding my thinking.
We're in an unprecedented moment of speed and change. Many of the fundamentals of how you build and scale a company — pace, team size, tooling — aren't just different, they're constantly shifting. Founders are navigating enormous opportunity alongside enormous ambiguity. Exciting, but hard.
The biggest shift I'm seeing is in talent. For a long time, headcount was a proxy for success. Companies wore employee count as a badge of scale. Now, the obsession is efficiency: how far can a small, exceptional team go with the tools available to them?
But more than size, the skills required have fundamentally changed. The old playbook valued experience and taught us to find people who have led similar teams before. Now, the people in highest demand are those who learn new tools the fastest, run toward the unknown and figure it out, and turn constant tinkering into constantly evolving process. That's a new orientation for individuals and for companies alike.
A few things I keep coming back to:
Run toward the things you don't understand instead of away from them. Figure out the ten words that make the confusing concept click, and learn them.
Show up and do the work. Follow through on what you say you'll do.
Lead with empathy. Don't let hard experiences steal your optimism. Let people surprise you.
Work with people you wildly respect and genuinely love being around.
Be someone others look to and trust for sound judgment.
My mom. She had a remarkable career as General Counsel of multiple Fortune 500 companies, but more than that, she showed me what it looks like to give your all to every part of your life. As a leader. As a thinker. As an executive. As a mom.
She taught me it isn't easy and there's no need to pretend it is — but that with some grace, it's rewarding, possible, and worth it. Growing up watching her, I never questioned whether I could have a full professional life and everything else I cared about. I didn’t have to imagine how that could fit together because it was the only example I knew first hand.
She also taught me that the world will have lots of boxes for women — what the "executive woman" should look like, the mother, the wife — and the best thing you can do is toss them aside and be the most authentic version of yourself.
Every time I hear my sons proudly tell someone their mom is an "adventure capitalist," I think about her.
My only answer to this is people. Primarily, my husband Scott and my two sons, Max and Leo. They are 7 and 5, wildly silly, endlessly energetic, and shockingly wise. They put everything else into complete perspective.
My other life hack: live as close as possible to friends you really love, and make sure seeing them fits into every crevice of your busy life. It's worth engineering for.
Two, because I can't pick one.
First: consumer AI is about to have its real moment. So far, it's been a sometimes-search-replacement and an exciting promise that still feels slightly out of reach for most people. Building your own agent is easier than it's ever been, but still several steps too many for most consumers. In 2026, I think we'll see a real wave of abstractions that wrap these new tools into products that genuinely intersect everyday life: how we coordinate, manage money, handle health, stay close to the people we love. At their best, these won't feel like technology at all. They'll feel like magic, with buttery interfaces.
Second: the combination of large models, proliferating sensors, and declining hardware costs is transforming our ability to understand and interact with the physical world. Software has been the defining domain of the last wave of technology, but I think the next wave will be defined by hardware and software together, creating entirely new ways of seeing and engaging with the world around us. Autonomous vehicles and home robots, but also deeper understanding of climate patterns, new pathways to clean energy, and things we haven't imagined yet. There is so much to be excited about.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. It's a strange, quirky novel, but at its core, it's a story about why stories matter. How we craft them, how we invest in them, how we use them to make sense of our lives and the world. And about the power we have over our own narrative.
It's mattered to my career, but honestly to more than that. I think a lot about how much early-stage companies resemble stories — glimmers of truth wrapped in narratives of what could come to be. The process of believing in them and breathing life into them is its own kind of magic.
