Fred Wilson (born 1961) is a New York-based venture capitalist (active since 1987) and a prominent blogger. Due to his successful investment track record and community involvement, he is recognized as a leading voice of the venture capital finance community in New York. TheFunded.com, a social networking site for technology entrepreneurs, rated him their favorite venture capitalist in 2007. Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Bug Labs, Meetup, Zynga, Covestor, del.icio.us, Etsy, FeedBurner, Heyzap, Indeed.com, Tacoda, Oddcast, Disqus, Zemanta, and Clickable.
   In 1996, Wilson co-founded Flatiron Partners with his partner Jerry Colonna. Flatiron, named after the Flatiron District, became a successful, primarily follow-on investment fund in the New York City area, with investments in notable Dot-com bubble successes and failures including Alacra, comScore Networks, Yoyodyne, Geocities, Kozmo.com, New York Times Digital, PlanetOut, Return Path, Scout electromedia, Standard Media International, Starmedia, and VitaminShoppe.com. The firm’s 1996 fund capitalized at $150 million with two investors: SOFTBANK Technology Ventures and Chase Capital Partners, the private-equity arm of Chase Manhattan Corp. The firm later raised another fund capitalized at $500 million with Chase Capital Partners as the sole active LP. In 2001, Wilson and Colonna essentially shut down Flatiron (although they still manage what remains of its portfolio). Wilson offered a blunt assessment in July 2005 in Business 2.0, “Yeah, boy, we really screwed up a bunch of things.”
   Prior to Flatiron, he was at Euclid Partners. Wilson has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is married with three children and lives in New York City. Wilson publishes a blog called AVC: musings of a VC in NYC. As of March 24, 2011, its monthly readership is approximately 280,000, according to Google Analytics. Wilson publishes one post per day, almost always on a topic related to venture capital, entrepreneurship or the Internet. His blog has the highest readership of any blog written by a venture capitalist and his posts usually attract more than 100 comments per post. Wilson is also an active philanthropist and community advocate having worked on initiatives including the redevelopment of Union Square and Madison Square in New York City. He is also a board member of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects individuals to classrooms in need. Currently, Wilson is involved in the Pier 40 Partnership.