Peter Walker

“One of them was amount of capital raised in, in the Bay Area last year, and it eclipses the next nine cities throughout the world.”

“There's always this cohort of mostly candidly AI infrastructure companies that are building foundational models or building like the tech around foundational models, and they are getting valued at Just astronomical numbers. You know, I call it a 160, 170, 182 …”

“I have a feeling that what's going to happen is a lot of these companies are going to flop. And we're going to do what we did in 2021 with some major, major outliers that really work. And maybe that's the whole point, but I think there's pain coming for this. …”

“The debate about margins in this AI world, I think is candidly a little overdone, like pretty early. There's every indication that the economics might continue to change.”

“If you're talking a seed round, you're raising between four and five million bucks. You're probably valuing the company at 20 to 22 post.”

“Like, you're talking 14, fifteen million dollars raised. You're talking seventy-five million or so post-money valuations on that.”

“The amount raised, you know, it used to be that the amount raised was maybe more like eight to ten million dollars in a series A and now it's much more call it 13 to 15. So that's a 50% increase in the capital”

“But in aggregate, I think series A is the place that I would be most cautious about investing right now because the money is really high and these are still very young, very, very unproven businesses.”

“I think the defensibility has never been lower.”

“I think historically, even though we said they were winner take all, we never actually believed it. Like you can do pretty well as number two. Now I think that is an open question, especially at the scale that you need to go back again to the Decacorn plus kin…”

“36 or 37% of the companies on Carta that joined us this year are solo founded. A lot of those companies will end up not being venture backed. So the venture backed percentage, it's probably more like a quarter maybe.”

“What I hope is that these companies, what I haven't seen so far, and what I hope happens, is that these companies that are being built by a solo founder grant equity to their early team in a different way. Like there are just higher levels of equity granted to…”

“I think that like, I think hiring the number one, number two, number three engineer of the business has almost never been harder. Because the alternatives are so obviously like hitting you over the head. If you can be a founding engineer at a startup, why coul…”

“And I think it's, there's a lot of acquisitions happening right now, mostly for AI talent. So I think there's, candidly, I think there's a lot of companies quietly, not saying it, that are quietly being built to get acquired earlier.”

“I actually met Peter in person recently and he told me he literally just took the job at Carta because of the data access that he would get.”

“So I always felt like the specialist funds might do better in fund one or fund two, but making a firm out of a specialist thesis is very difficult.”

“The conversation that I'm having more than any other with founders today is if I'm not in this super hot quartile, in this super hot AI circle, do I have a chance? There's like a, I wouldn't call it fatalism, but there's a definite strong negativity or sense t…”

“I think that stuff is going to get thrown out the window over the next two years. It's just going to be like, do we need this person?”

“If you looked at versus 20, 22, the salaries are up, but like not keeping pace with inflation. Everywhere except the obvious exception to that rule is AI ML engineering, which is flying.”

“I'll say upfront, the number of founders taking secondary after their seed round is twice as high this year as it was in 2021, which was the highest we'd ever seen.”

“While we're seeing, call it close to double the amount of founders taking something out at seed, like almost none of them have employee participation.”

“Weirdly, in the last year, there's been a couple quarters where the companies that took a bridge More of them have made it to the next stage and the companies who haven't taken a bridge yet.”

“The preemption rounds, those are really real in a way that they haven't been in a long time.”

“Turns out highly concentrated funds, typically like 20 companies per portfolio. Outperforms spray and pray, but spray and pray looks pretty good.”

“I am pretty sure that in the next two years, I'm just gonna stop reporting on AI.”

“The founding team after their first priced round, which in this case would be a priced seed round. So real institutional capital in the business now. Own, on median, 56% of their own business.”

“It is AI and everything else that applies to valuations, obviously, but it also applies to deal frequency, activity, demand, the like metadata around fundraising, which is if you are not a, how do I put this? Like, I love the term legible or credible startup, …”

“There's a ton of time and attention and headlines that are focused on these giant AI rounds. And those are certainly happening, right? They're not unreal, but they do distort the market.”

“I'm skeptical that this is gonna happen again. Or that it's gonna re-accelerate and prices are gonna go up. I don't know. We'll see. Well, we should make a bet and have Peter Walker from Carta give us the data in a year.”

“Just kind of right at that 20 to twenty two billion dollars a quarter mark. And that, if you look historically in the beginning of 2020, it was pretty much, it was, it's a little bit higher than the beginning of 2020.”

“I'd expect as we look, maybe do a little projection ahead to 2025, like things are probably going to get a little bit better, especially with interest rates or, you know, who knows how this election is going to play into this, et cetera. But My instinct is tha…”

“What used to get you a Series A no longer gets you a Series A. And it's, you know, so like the expectations have shifted. The competition has increased.”

“I also think, I mean, more this year than any year that I've been focused on startups, there's just a ton of founders who are not as enamored with venture capital overall as a pathway. They're just like, yeah, maybe down the road if I need it, but pretty much …”

“If you look at the dilution per round, you're talking 10% in a pre-seed, you're talking 20% in a seed, and 20% again in your Series A. Those are the median dilution marks.”

“The general gist of it was that if you raise a small seed round, that is less highly correlated with your ability to raise an A round. So it looks to be that the smallest, and there's a bell curve here where, you know, at the smallest seed rounds tend to make …”