Future Positive

Future Positive is a separate fund vehicle co-founded by USV’s Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham in 2014. It pursues a thesis around societal resilience and positive externalities that the partners wanted to house outside USV’s core internet-focused mandate. While the firms share principals, they have distinct investment committees, limited partners, and portfolio construction strategies.

The firm writes seed and early-stage checks into software and data-driven companies operating at the intersection of commercial viability and long-term human or planetary well-being. Sectors include climate adaptation, AI transparency, decentralized finance, digital health, and education access. Two disclosed portfolio companies are Koko, a nonprofit mental-health platform, and Labster, the virtual science lab simulator.

Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham remain the firm's founding investment decision-makers. In 2020, Tonya Surman — the founding CEO of the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto — joined as a partner, expanding the firm's sourcing and diligence capacity within North American and European social-enterprise networks.

Future Positive is a venture capital firm, structured as a traditional asset manager. It is not a family office — the capital is managed on behalf of external limited partners, not a single source of private wealth. The confusion sometimes arises because Wilson and Burnham are prominent individual investors, but the firm raises funds from institutions and accredited individuals.

No. Future Positive has not publicly reported assets under management since its founding in 2014. The firm operates below the public-disclosure thresholds that would require a regulatory filing showing AUM, and the co-founders treat fund-level metrics as private.