TheDeal's Mary Kathleen Flynn buttonholes the less-visible genius behind Union Square Ventures' recent home runs, partner Brad Burnham.

Following on investments in Feedburner, Tacoda, Twitter, Bug Labs, Etsy, Indeed, and about a dozen other thriving companies, USV just invested in Meetup. Brad says the firm's next batch of investments will likely follow this "Web Meets World" theme:

"The next generation of services will need to have an impact on the real world and the real economy, not just an attention economy driven by self expression and discovery online," blogs Burnham. "These new services will also need to reach real people, many of who use few if any Web services today.