Nick GrossmanBoston, Massachusetts, United States
Bio
Nick Grossman is a partner at Union Square Ventures. Previously, he led an incubator for startups at the intersection of cities and data at OpenPlans, with a focus on cultivating open source communities, building open data platforms, and supporting open standards efforts. Nick has a degree in Urban Studies from Stanford University, has held academic affiliations at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School, and learned everything he knows about technology from generous people on the internet and by using view:source. He grew up in Brooklyn and now lives outside of Boston with his wife and two children.
Social
Experience
General Partner
Union Square Ventures
Jan 2019 - Current
Led, co-led and supported investments in: - FlamingoDAO - FingerprintsDAO - Dune Analytics (Series A) - Mirror.xyz (Seed) - zkSync (Series A) - Jam.dev (Seed) - Uniswap (Series A) - Variant Fund (formation) - Diem (f/k/a Libra; formation) - Props (f/k/a YouNow) - Leap.energy (Series A) - Helium (Series C) - Algorand (Seed) - Koko (Seed; acquired by Airbnb)
Special Projects
Union Square Ventures
Jan 2012 - Dec 2018
Focus = crypto/blockchains, data/privacy, trust & safety, security, legal/regulatory/policy.
Visiting Scholar
MIT Media Lab
Oct 2011 - Dec 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.
Managing Director, Civic Commons
Code for America
Mar 2011 - Dec 2011
Advised cities on open source / open data / open standards strategy, and supported the Open311 web standard.
Director, OpenPlans Labs
OpenPlans
Apr 2006 - Dec 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.
Co-Founder
Streetsblog
Jan 2006 - Dec 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.
Project Manager
Project for Public Spaces
Oct 2002 - Mar 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.
Laborer / Apprentice Carpenter
KW Construction
Aug 2001 - Jul 2002
Learned to build houses and shovel gravel.
Web Developer
Independent
2001 - 2007
Built websites and web applications as an independent developer and designer. Clients included NYC-area small businesses, nonprofits and startups.
Ballboy
US Open
2000 - 2003
Yes, I was basically an adult when I did this. But it was awesome.
Ski Instructor
Butternut
1994 - 1997
Taught toddlers to snowplow and pre-teens to carve.
Education
The Internet
Programming, law, philosophy of technology
Stanford University
BA, Urban Studies
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InfoThis public profile is provided courtesy of Clay. All information found here is in the public domain.