Nick Grossman

General Partner at Union Square Ventures

Nick Grossman

General Partner at Union Square Ventures

United States

Overview

Work Experience

Union Square Ventures

General Partner
2019 - Current
Investing in early stage opportunities across USV's thesis areas, including web2, web3, climate, and AI.
Special Projects
2012 - 2018
Focus = web3/crypto, trust & safety, data/privacy, security, legal/regulatory/policy.

MIT Media Lab

Visiting Scholar
2011 - 2013
Studied tech policy while at the MIT Media Lab's Center for Civic Media. My work during this time was supported by the Ford Foundation and Union Square Ventures.

Code for America

Managing Director, Civic Commons
2011 - 2011
Advised cities on open source / open data / open standards strategy, and supported the Open311 web standard.

OpenPlans

Director, OpenPlans Labs
2006 - 2011
OpenPlans was an incubator for startups at the intersection of cities and data. Our ~50 person team of designers, developers and business leaders created things such as: * MTA Bus Time: NYC's real-time bus data platform and API (http://bustime.mta.info) * Open311: open web standard for reporting urban issues, deployed in ~50 cities worldwide (http://www.open311.org) * OpenTripPlanner: open source multi-modal routing engine; world's largest open source software project for public transit (http://opentripplanner.com) * OpenPlans Transportation: enterprise open source business serving transportation market (now Conveyal: http://conveyal.com) * Civic Works: app development studio focused on urban mapping (now at http://openplans.org) * TransportationCamp: unconference series in SF, NYC, DC, Montreal, Atlanta and more cities (http://transportationcamp.org) * NY Transit Data: successful campaign to convince NYC Transit to open up its data (http://nytransitdata.org) * Streetsblog: blog covering transportation policy, now in 8 cities, with 400 member blog network worldwide (http://streetsblog.org) * Streetfilms: film company covering urban transportation issues (http://www.streetfilms.org) * GothamSchools: blog covering education in NYC (now ChalkBeat: http://chalkbeat.org) Clients, partners & funders included: City of NY, City of SF, District of Columbia, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NY), Portland TriMet, IBM, The Boston Globe, Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, Omidyar Network, MacArthur Foundation.

Streetsblog

Co-Founder
2006 - 2011
Launched Streetsblog.org as NYC's hub for transportation policy news, discussion and advocacy. Grew Streetsblog to include outposts in SF, LA and DC, a 400-member blog network, and a film company, Streetfilms. Streetsblog and Streetfilms helped catalyze NYC's movement to reform its transportation policies to make the city more walkable, bikeable and transit-friendly -- resulting in the construction of 250 miles of new bike lanes, the redesign of dozens of NYC's plazas, major reform of the city's parking policies, and the launch of the city's bike-sharing program, CitiBike.

Independent

Web Developer
2001 - 2007
Built websites and web applications as an independent developer and designer. Clients included NYC-area small businesses, nonprofits and startups.

Project for Public Spaces

Project Manager
2002 - 2006
Studied patterns of activity in public spaces and made recommendations for improvements. Projects included: Times Square (NYC); Washington Square Park (NYC); Jamaica Transit Station Area (NYC); Littleton, NH; Lincoln, NE; Newark, NJ.