Insight
Walker: AI expectations downgrade traditional T2D3 startup growth from great to good
“We might do the old T two D three triple twice, and then double, double, double over a period of five years in terms of revenue. That's a great revenue path, correct? And you kind of got to tell them, look, that used to be great. Now it's just good because gre…”
Assertion Supported
Walker: Median Carta seed valuations exceed 2021 bubble peak
“At Seed, for instance, they're higher than they were in twenty-twenty-one, which was our most recent peak bubble era. And they're higher by a considerable amount. You know, the median seed valuation on Carta these days is probably something like 16 or seventee…”
Opinion
Walker: Moving to San Francisco is non-negotiable for maximizing startup valuations
“I think if you are a founder who is trying to maximize the valuation of their company, moving to SF is the obvious right strategy. I think there's actually no way to debate that. Higher, the highest valuations do not exist outside of San Francisco.”
Opinion
Walker: Private tech industry employment likely peaked permanently in early 2022
“As of right now, my instinct is that this time actually is different and I would not expect, it's possible the highest number of employees to ever work at private tech companies as a total industry was in early twenty-twenty-two.”
Opinion
Walker: AI dominance in early-stage VC crowds out other opportunities
“One, because it is sort of such a dominant theme of early stage investing now that it seems to be crowding out other investable opportunities to be quite honest.”
Assertion Supported
Walker: Series A B2B software median ARR jumps from $1M to $3M
“Insofar as we can tell, if you take that core B to B software company, you know, used to be, you have a million bucks in ARR. You can start talking about a series A. Now it's three on median and the top end is more like seven or eight.”
Assertion Supported
Walker: Mega funds boom while emerging managers face a struggling separate market
“The biggest venture funds in the planet are fundraising Better than they ever have. But it's almost as though there's two separate venture markets. There's the emerging manager, smaller fund market, and then there's the massive manager, mega fund market. One i…”
Insight
Walker: Scaling to a $300M fund breaks seed-stage investment models
“You cannot invest into the same companies that you were investing into at a fifty million dollar fund at a three hundred million dollar fund in the same way.”
Opinion
Walker: Specialist venture funds struggle to build enduring firms beyond fund two
“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.”
Assertion Supported
Walker: 8 to 10 famous companies dominate 80% of VC secondary volume
“That's probably 80% of the total transacted volume in secondaries for venture these days is eight to 10 names that everybody already knows.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Walker: Median Series A startup headcount plummets from 25 to 16 employees
“You know, the median, so if you look at Series A companies on Carta, the ones that raised Series A in twenty-twenty-one, they had 25 people working for them. The ones that, that raised Series A in twenty-twenty-five had 16, and by the end of this year we think…”
Insight
Walker: Lean teams replace headcount as the new startup status symbol
“You know, it candidly, if you put a tagline on that, it used to be really cool to say how many people worked for you. The higher the number, the better. And now the exact opposite is true. You want to have as lean a team as possible. You know, the idea of havi…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Walker: Overvalued AI Startups Face Inevitable Difficult Choices
“There are still going to be, and already are a lot of AI companies that are buzzy and exciting that get far overvalued. And those founders are going to be faced with some difficult choices in the coming years. That's inevitable.”
Assertion Contradicted
Walker: Carta down rounds peaked at 22% in 2022
“In the peak of that, in 20, 22, 22% were down rounds.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Walker: Longer private cycles force early VCs to sell at later rounds
“So as companies stay private longer, there's going to be more pressure on early managers to show some returns early on. That will in turn push Seed and Series A funds to consider selling a portion of their stake at B, C, D, etc.”
Assertion Supported
Walker: Carta manages 60,000 startup cap tables and 2,500-3,000 venture funds
“Carta sits on top of the cap table of 60,000 startups these days, as well as fund admin for two and a half to 3000 US venture funds.”
Assertion Supported
Walker: Startup down rounds drop to 15%, signaling a healthier venture market
“Right now we're hovering at about 15%, so on the downslope, things are getting more healthy, but we're not back to where we were before.”
