Neil Young’s Spotify Protest Isn’t Censorship, It’s Exercising His Free Market

Tech Companies Who Strike Deals With Specific Creators Cease Being Neutral Platforms And Are Accountable To Repercussions Beyond Their Own Terms of Service “Neil Young should stay in his lane and j… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

The Role That Luck Plays In Our Success

Why Being Thankful For Good Fortune Doesn’t Have to Ignore Impact of Effort & Skill “There’s no free lunches,” was the mantra my father repeated to me most often as a kid. I was taught tha… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

Investor Jarrod Dicker on how “the emergence of NFTs has brought provable digital ownership to the internet. This evolution can’t be overstated.”

And Why He Abandoned a Career in Web Ads for Leading Crypto Investing at The Chernin Group Even before my Jarrod Dicker starting tweeting in his “web2 vs web3” style, I gave him shit abou… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

In Order to Live a Happier Life, Say “No” More in 2022

Get More Time and More Energy By Being Thoughtful About Your Calendar I’m a believer that one’s calendar is a very true representation of your priorities. If you feel like you’re not getting done t… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

“I try not to ride the emotional wave of startup life like I sometimes did before” and other lessons from a second time founder

Shepherd’s CEO Justin Levine answers Five Questions on how his $6.2m fundraise came about & why it didn’t include me (yet) I love working with great people and as a venture capitalist, am fortu… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth Says Video Games Were What Hooked Him On Tech

Multiplayer games “really gave me the feeling of being socially connected when I was otherwise on my own at home” My sense is that many people in our industry are fundamentally shaped by what tech … | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

Why Today’s ‘Mentorship Programs’ Mostly Fail Women in Tech (and How to Improve Them)

Ellen DaSilva’s Journey, from Banking to Twitter to Hims and Now, Her Own NewCo! Like many relationships these days, mine and Ellen’s began online. But we successfully converted it to an NYC IRL co… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

“It’s okay to take profits and not hodl forever.” Does this make Alex Taub a web3 contrarian or just reasonable?

A Career In Startups From Dwolla to DAOs (and how to get whitelisted for the Illuminati NFT mint) When I befriended Alex Taub in 2013 he lived in New York City, didn’t have children, and certainly … | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 2 years ago

I’m Successful In Tech Because I Managed To Visit The Future Without A Time Machine

Why Being on a College Campus From 1991–1995 Changed My Life I visited the future and it made me wealthy. Not Biff and Grays Sports Almanac Back to the Future II style, but maybe again, not that fa… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Avatars Don’t Poop But You Can Be Sure The Metaverse Will Have Toilets

What I learned from my own years building a virtual world “THIS IS GOING TO BE THE 3D INTERNET” a tech reporter boldly wrote. When was this claim made? Not in a 2021 tweet covering Mark Zuckerberg’… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

How I Calmed My Imposter Syndrome with These Two Tricks

‘Show them how smart you are’ wasn’t a very successful way to make friends Most people think of Imposter Syndrome as expressing itself most simply as “I don’t belong here,” as in “I’m not worthy of… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Blame Me For YouTube’s ‘Dislike’ Option. But Now I’m Glad They’re Removing It.

In 2010, It Almost Disappeared But Then I Put My, Err, Thumb On The Scale “This isn’t Disneyland,” I insisted while challenging our team’s recommendation that we remove the Thumbs Down (Dislike) bu… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

‘Entrepreneur In Residence’ Used To Be One Of Silicon Valley’s Most Prestigious Titles. Now It’s Dead.

Buying Talent Is More Attractive Than Renting In Today’s Competitive Venture Market Imagine getting paid a solid salary to sit around and think up new startup ideas, distracted only by the free foo… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

“I’ll see in 2022 if I can turn The SF Minute into an actual business that’s somewhat sustainable”

Five Questions With Local Newsletter Author Nick Bastone I love me a good newsletter, especially one that lets us all keep up with local news in a succinct and actionable way. So when The SF Minute… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Vanity Fair’s Profile of The Rock is Just Fantastic

Sure It Doesn’t Ask Any “Hard Questions” But Maybe It’s Okay To Just Appreciate His Journey I don’t stan. I don’t have heroes or mentors. There are people whom I admire as humans but even then it’s… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

A Tech Millionaire’s Guide To Philanthropy

How I Give Away My Money. And Perhaps How You Can Too! I still insist that we don’t talk enough about money in our community. I mean really talk — publicly, openly, emotionally. Philanthropy (which… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

What I Tell All New VCs About Their First Funds

No Need To “Grab a Coffee and Pick My Brain” Because Here’s What I’d Say… A lot of new venture funds out there these days. People sometimes ask me, “wow, is there still room for new investors?” and… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Why This Ex-Facebook Engineer Thinks Non-Technical Product Managers Are Awesome (Oh and He’s Hiring)

What Leadership Roles at Facebook & YouTube Taught Rushabh Doshi About Building Product Teams What do I hope happens when I write a blog post? Lots of people to read it? Sure, I guess. But the … | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Learn To Hire Well And You’ll Never Lose

Three Tips For Leaders Who Want To Up Their Recruiting Game Show me the first 20 employees of a startup and I’ll tell you whether it’s going to be successful or not. In my mind there’s no greater i… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Ode to a Non-Technical Product Manager (Revisited)

Looking For Your Updated Feedback One of the areas I get the most cold emails about are career paths into product management, especially for folks without engineering backgrounds. I wrote my though… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Win The ‘Sure Things’ Or Find The Hidden Gems? What’s My Job As A VC?

This Has Been My Favorite Question Of Peers In 2021 “So, do you think your job is to win ‘consensus’ deals or find the ‘non-consensus’ opportunities?” This has been my favorite question to ask fell… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Celebrating 10 Years of Therapy

How My Attitude Towards Mental Health Changed From My 20s to 30s to 40s 2011 and I was at a low point. Most alarmingly, it wasn’t clear that I could get out of my situation by myself. The mental st… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

“We Don’t Consider This a Conflicting Investment”

VCs With Multiple Stage-Specific Funds Are Likely To Rewrite The Existing Etiquette. And What This Means For Founders. Let’s start out by admitting that the question of ‘competitive conflict’ has a… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Most Startup ‘Pivots’ Aren’t Really Pivots, They’re Just What Startups Are Supposed To Do

Don’t Freak Out When Part Of Your Original Hypothesis Was Wrong If you showed me a bunch of random early stage startups and asked me to select the ones disproportionately likely to be successful, I… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

If You’re Not Sure Whether Your Current Investors Would Give You More Money, Th

Startup CEOs Should Test Strength of Cap Table Every ~6 Months To Know Where They Stand I really liked Jason Lemkin’s “Do You Have a Weak Investor Syndicate” blog post from earlier in the summer. G… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Future of Work Software That Focuses on EQ Not Just IQ

Why The Move to Remote Has Accelerated The Need for New Tools The first generation of SaaS was about single player workflows and data. The second generation added collaboration (aka multiplayer). A… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

‘Inside Rounds’ Used to Be Bad. Sequoia & WhatsApp Changed Venture Forever

Why Their Multibillion Dollar Outcome Flipped The Script Pre-2014: Insider Rounds Are The Funding of Last Resort Post-2014: Why Are Insiders Letting This One Get Out? When WhatsApp took $19 bi… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Tech Reporters, You’re Being Played by Using “Oversubscribed” to Describe Succe

Why I Cringe Every Time I Read This Word I recognize this is an overreaction. But humans have their quirks and one of mine is I cannot stand when the tech biz press uses “oversubscribed” to charact… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

“I Can Really See Us Leading This Funding Round” Isn’t a Term Sheet

Why VCs Are Always ‘Very Excited’ About Your Progress But That Doesn’t Mean Anything Until They Make an Offer My job as an early stage investor includes translation services, specifically helping s… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

We Don’t Talk Enough About Money In Silicon Valley, Revisited

Things to Remember As You and Your Friends Get Wealthy “Giraffe money.” That’s the phrase which stuck with me from Erin Griffith’s NYTimes article this spring about the latest set of weal… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

2 1/2 Angel Investing Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid

I Made These Mistakes A Few Times But You Don’t Need To Part of successful angel investing is picking winners. Another part is avoiding picking losers. Before we founded Homebrew I made ~20 or so i… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

End of an Error: As Conan O’Brien Wraps Up 28 Years of Late Night, I Was an Idi

What I Learned From Working On Conan’s Season #2 and My Own Fears Actor John Lithgow playfully tossed a show at me, boxer Larry Holmes jokingly (I think) threatened to knock me out and actress Jenn… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Don’t Let Your Best Product Managers All Become People Managers Or Your Company Will Suffer

Why Ken Norton’s Dual Product Management Career Path Can Also Encourage Innovation At Scale “Rising to your level of misery” is how Arthur Brooks frames the trap of being good enough at your job th… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

We Raised $50m+ To Back New Venture Capitalists Who Don’t Look Like Me

It’s weird to try and help fund people who are going to compete with me, right? Well, I couldn’t be more excited to do just this. The 10 initial Screendoor Venture Advisors Ok, the head… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

How Pro Skateboarder Tony Hawk Made Me a Better Parent

Teaching my daughter that ‘adventure boo-boos’ are part of life I come from a family of flinchers. Well-intentioned of course but with an instinctual urge to ask “is that safe?” before proceeding. … | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

The Great Talent Reshuffling of 2021 Has Begun

Why the next 6–12 months will be the best time in a decade for startups to hire Our YOLO Economy New York Times’ Kevin Roose labeled the new attitude sweeping workers in certain privilege… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Employee Surveys Won’t Tell You Whether To Return To An Office Or Not

Engage your team and understand their needs but craft your “Return To Office” strategy from the top down We’ve backed a wide variety of startups at Homebrew but the CEOs are now all coalescing arou… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Digital Plastic Surgery: Why Boys and Girls Use Filters Differently

Can You Build a Photo Community Which Doesn’t Prioritize Pretty? “Young girls, however, see AR filters primarily as a tool for beautification: “[The girls] were all saying things like, ‘I put this … | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Succeeding in Venture Capital as an Introvert

How a year of virtual living made me appreciate people more When I tell people I’m an introvert, reactions split into two camps. For those who know me well, it’s pretty much, “Yeah, duh.” But for t… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Turntable.fm Reminds Me How Much Fun the Web Can Be

What happens when your favorite dead product rises again Turntable 2021, pretty much the same product (for now). Usually the first email I open in the morning doesn’t make me scream out “HOLY SHIT!… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

The Baddest Band in Town

In a pre-RATM band, guitarist Tom Morello was shamed by a musician friend about how his guitar strings ran long off the head of the instrument (a now iconic look for him). “‘Cut your strings! What,… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

A Year of Zoom Genitals, Bourbon Bottles and Child-Rearing

Five Memorable URLs from COVID Season One (aka the last 12 months) March 11th was “COVID Day One” for many folks, or at least when it crossed from “will this be a big deal?” to “this is a big … | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Why There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Startup Within a Big Company’

You will never be able to take the brand risks, the legal risks, or the partnerships risks that a true startup can Noam Bardin of Waze. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images I’d exchanged DMs with Waze… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Three Types of Startup Advisors You Might Not Have Thought About (But Will Help

Advisors can be so much more than social proof and tactical advice “Can we put you as an advisor in our deck? You don’t even need to do anything and we’ll give you equity. It would be a big help fo… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

This Is The Single Most Important Page On The Web (If You’re a Human)

Cognitive Biases Shape Us Beautifully And Tragically If you could only access a single URL on the web what would it be? Not something like Google or YouTube but actually a single static url — so yo… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Don’t Just Stand With Someone Being Harassed. Stand In Front Of Them.

Lessons on Allyship and Community ✅ IRL Friend. That’s the tweet I employ to signify that I’ve finally met up with someone previously only known to me online. Of course 2020 hasn’t had much of… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

I Just Got Paid For Work I Did 20 Years Ago.

Startups Should Work To Make Their Employees Wealthy Not Just Their Founders And Investors Earlier this week a modest deposit appeared in my checking account, one I honestly never expected. You see… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago

Instagram, YouTube & TikTok Are Burning Out Their Creators. Here’s How to Fix That.

Creator Wellness Will Be A Key Goal of New Products Being a modern creator is, for many, exhausting. The falling economic costs of production and distribution have been replaced by a new set of tax… | Continue reading


@hunterwalk.com | 3 years ago