The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 27 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Walk: VCs refusing founder liquidity risk exploiting entrepreneurs while collecting fees
“Like the very least you're missing opportunities to de-stress founders in a way that will increase the probability of a wonderful outcome. And at the worst, you know, you're exploiting, you know, founders who have all their eggs in one basket, you know, while …”
Hunter Walk: There is no Series A crunch in tech
“I tend to be on the side that there is no Series A crunch in the sense that I have yet to find a company that I thought should be able to raise a Series A fail to do so.”
Walk: Overcapitalized startups face silent disappearance, low-value acquihires, or noisy collapse
“And so I think for most of those companies, layoffs are going to turn into silent disappearance low value acquihires or noisy collapses.”
Walk: Consensus decision-making is foolish for venture funds with 3+ partners
“If there were three or more of us, consensus would be You know, a foolish goal wouldn't serve us or the founders well.”
Walk: Homebrew never missed an outlier investment due to consensus rules
“We look back And we've struggled over 10 years to find an occasion where lack of, you know, if there was lack of consensus, it meant we didn't do the deal. And I don't think we have any, you know, quote unquote outliers that were, you know, false negatives bec…”
Walk: De-risked seed investing does not exist
“I don't think there's such a thing as like, De-risked seed. Like you should be betting on companies that in a success scenario can be wildly, wildly successful and worth a, you know, incredible amount of capital and want, you know, to own a percentage of those…”
Walk: Raising a $200M-$300M fund would have sacrificed team happiness
“Raising 203 hundred million dollars, you know, like some of our peers and going to market in a model where we brought on another GP, we expanded our team, we brought on another platform person. Like, I actually think we could, you know, Hit exceed our benchmar…”
Walk: Venture fund size dictates investment strategy
“People attribute this to Mike Maple's affiliate and it's a hundred percent true. Like your fund size is your strategy, right?”
Hunter Walk: All Homebrew startups hitting milestones raised Series A
“And what I'll say, at least through first fund and, you know, starting to get halfway through our second fund, is when we and our founders agree on those milestones and they hit those milestones, none of them have had problems raising an A round.”
Walk: Homebrew only raised capital from LPs supportive of equal partnerships
“The LPs we ended up with were all LPs who were excited about equal partnerships. The ones who passed on us were ones that wanted a single key mat, like this notion of, well, it's great to have multiple GPs, but at funds under a hundred million dollars, we real…”
Walk: Homebrew launched with explicit commitment to no firm growth or succession
“We also started with the idea of no succession plan, no growth.”
Walk: Success does not solve unaddressed co-founder disagreements
“And I think a lot of those tensions are often what caused conflict either because they weren't discussed early enough or because there's disagreement from the get-go and you figure, you know, success will solve all things. And that's not true.”
Walk: Homebrew took less allocation than offered in 10 of 11 deals
“In 10 of the 11 investments that we made last year, we were offered more allocation than we took, because what we care about is really sort of working with great founders and great co-investors.”
Walk: Homebrew now prioritizes lead investor quality for seed participation
“We used to not care who the other investors were. We're like, we're going to help you and we'll get other people great around us. Now we actually care about quality, you know, of the lead investor.”
Walk: Downturn will worsen for Series A-D startups lacking investability
“I think it'll get worse for series A through D companies that can't remain, you know, sort of like default investable.”
Walk: Several Homebrew portfolio companies delayed IPOs despite being ready
“You know, we have a few that I think could have been public, you know, already, but have decided, you know, for various reasons to hold off, and I think when they become public, they'll be even stronger companies.”
Walk: Venture slowdown will benefit early product-market fit startups
“And so in some ways, I think part of our portfolio that's really going to benefit from the slowdown Are the early product market fit, you know, companies that now have some capital in the bank, but don't have to, aren't getting the crossover investors, pitchin…”
Walk: Investor-founder relationships do not improve after writing a check
“If it doesn't feel right before you write the check, it definitely doesn't get better after.”
Hunter Walk: Early-stage investors must back misunderstood companies
“So I'd say Lemkin is totally correct when you're playing in a space where the goalposts are well documented. But I think as an early stage investor, you also need to be willing to back companies that are going to be misunderstood for a long period of time and …”
Hunter Walk: Founder-market fit is Homebrew's primary investment evaluation criterion
“I think if Satya and I had to make a decision about any one quality that was present or not present in terms of impacting a investment decision, it would probably be something around founder market Or the why, why are they building this company?”
Hunter Walk: Most seed deal flow is dark and limited to few funds
“Because most of the, you know, at the seed stage, deal flow is more, I think, about what I'd call sort of dark deal flow. Deals that don't get seen outside of a handful of funds than necessarily 50 funds all fighting over and tracking the same company.”
Walk: Homebrew will cap at five or six funds, avoiding intergenerational scale
“We want to stay focused on early stage companies that we can put not just capital, but time behind. So it means a relatively concentrated investment philosophy. And, you know, we want our legacy to be the companies that we worked with over five or six funds, n…”
Walk: Homebrew uses external 360-degree feedback interviews with founders every two years
“We do three, six used to do every other year, like an externally led, 360 degree feedback real process with our founders and some of our co-investors. Not, you know, like a survey, you know, or an NPS score, but like, Talking 30 minutes to each of our founders…”
Walk: Homebrew co-founders had millions saved before starting the fund
“I think, like, not that this is, you know, sort of unspoken, because I think we've both talked about this, but, like, we also started this later in our careers, right? Like, we were both in our, you know, mid-late thirties, and I think it's, like, we both We w…”
Walk: Managed by Q raised a strategic bridge round before Series A
“That's how we got involved in a company like Managed by Q, which is doing wonderfully. They were already at a revenue run rate and a growth rate that probably could have gotten them in a round, but they hadn't yet thought about what expansion at the time out o…”