(though in fact someone (not a partner) from one of those companies asked me if I would write something. Since the reviews are anonymous I would have written what I thought, good and bad. But perhaps the sign-up process uses telepathy and sniffed me out!)

Union Square Ventures was caught by the algorithm, most likely because of the reasons that you mention in your comment here.

The problem is that any CEO who is asked by a fund to write a review feels an inherent pressure to write something favorable, even if they are explicitly asked to write something accurate. This dilemma was pointed out to me by an early Member, who forwarded a few emails that he had received from venture capitalists asking for a review. In his words, the very act of asking implied a positive result.

The Venture Capital industry has a tremendous amount of learning that it can do by listening to the honest feedback by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs need to know all of the data about the reviews that they are reading. Ultimately, a good balance between the information and the meta-data needs to be struck.

Union Square Ventures is not “my firm”. It was formed by Brad Burnham and me and we have recently added Albert Wenger as our third partner. It is a true partnership in every sense of the word.

As for The Funded’s algorithm and our supposed transgression, I certainly did encourage my readers and the companies we have backed to visit The Funded and leave a comment about Union Square.

I did not tell them what to write and if they only stayed to leave a comment about our firm, well that’s unfortunate.

Fred