0:00Investors don't make companies. Founders make companies successful. Investors just try to increase the probability of that success. If somebody tells you that you don't have to sacrifice anything to do a startup, they're naive. If somebody tells you you have to sacrifice everything to do a startup, they're dangerous. [snorts] Hunter walk bath chime early and it went public at an 11.6 billion valuation. His firm homebrew led the seed round in graphite, which cursor, the $29 billion AI coding company, went on to acquire.
0:25Before investing, he ran products at YouTube inside Google. and he's been now writing checks for over 13 years. He told me skin in the game isn't [music] enough anymore. You've got to have your heart in the game. Today I walk with Hunter Walk.
0:40Overnight successes sometimes take hundreds of overnight. I don't need a markup from the next venture fund to prove that I'm good. I need the founders and the team to be happy with what they built because that's the only way I'm going to make money off.
0:51[music] Hunter, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's Thanks for having me. It's great. We met like a few number of years ago, right?
1:04Got introduced and now you're a podcast star.
1:07Exact Star is a strong word, but I know I've seen those view counts. I would I would say star. [laughter] Thank you. You're very, very kind. Um, so you are a Silicon Valley veteran. You started your career.
1:18Gray hairs. Gray hairs prove it, if I may say so. You started your career at the beginning of 2000s and you've been investing for over 13 years. And you're also a prolific writer, which I'm super impressed with because you write pretty often. And one thing I found really curious is you saying that now skin in the game is not enough. You got to have your heart in the game.
1:37So I'm curious when did you start noticing this in Silicon Valley?
1:41So you know, you was always used to say, okay, you start a company and you know, an investor comes in and you're both like you're committed, you're committed forever and it takes 10 years and so that's all that matters. you're all focused on that that end zone. But it feels like as you know the last few years and the both industries have grown like so many more companies being started so uh many more investors that the sort of time to proof has sort of
2:10condensed like if you're not a star in a few years you know oh rising star in the venture landscape in all these hot deals or if your company isn't one that's being talked about as you know the next thing to go to that everybody starts saying well you like what's the next thing? It's almost like you know uh you know you go to a party and somebody comes up and they're looking at your name tag and you can tell that like they start looking over your shoulder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're like who's the next person who's more valuable?
2:35And so I feel like you know we've sort of developed a little bit more of this like you know oh I'm looking at the name tag up you know who's the next thing and we all know that like overnight successes sometimes take hundreds of overnights thousands of [clears throat] overnights. some of the most valuable companies that we were lucky enough to invest in this company Chime which is the sort of you know largest um financial services provider uh of all these what they call the neo banks you know went public last year great company but like its first few years it almost died a few times as they got the model
3:04right so on so forth and like what I saw was they were able to create a great cap table of people who are really committed willing to write the second check to be like no this is working we just need to get across that chasm and fortunately a team that also you know was like we believe in And we believe in this not just because we think we're going to make a lot of money, but like there's a mission holding us together. We want to build financial services for the everyday American. And so for me, that's the idea of like heart in the game, not just skin in the game. Skin of the game, you run a net present value calculation and you're like, where's my time and
3:34attention best spent? Oh, you know, this next new hotness. NFTs are hot now. I should jump off of this and do that.
3:39Remember NFTs? Um, but if you have I feel like if you have heart in the game, you're willing to stick those out. Now, everything's a trade-off. M sometimes somebody you need a friend to come to you and be like you've been trying this for 10 years I know you're so committed but like there's an opportunity cost to doing this let's talk about that but frankly I as an investor I much rather deal with entrepreneurs who I have to have maybe have that conversation at some point of being like you tried your best you know let's do something with this and give you another shot from a fresh start than somebody who I think is
4:08always kind of like running in their head should I continue doing this or should I go join anthropic yeah that makes sense so when did you start noticing people having this mental mentality of always looking around for the next hot thing.
4:19Yeah. You know, I think some of it is motivated also by the sort of postcoid when we all got into this mindset of like everything is transactable. Transactable via computer like, oh, I'm going to start trading crypto. I'm going to start, you know, betting on the prediction markets. I'm going to start getting into the collectibles market.
4:36Like everything became this like short-term like adrenaline boost. You combine that with like structurally the rise of earlier and earlier liquidity via secondaries, you know, and all of a sudden the idea was like, well, you don't even have to, you know, wait your four years to be fully invested. You don't have to wait till the company goes public.
4:53You can start get the bag. And now look, I've written, you know, yeah, on on my blog like early on, like I was always a big proponent of no, get get especially get founders and early team members some liquidity early, you know, like the difference between being able to move out of your twobedroom with a roommate to, you know, move in with your partner, all those things are big, but you know, when you start taking that up in order of magnitude, when you start talking about, well, hey, it's been a few years and I don't have 7 million, 5 million, $10 million yet. I think that starts to sort of misalign the incentives of the time
5:23and effort that it takes to actually build something durable to say I don't care about durability. I just care about getting something and then we'll see what happens. And so you get a lot of employees I think who sort of almost treat you know their careers as uh like you know I'm going to get 18 months of equity here, 18 months of equity there.
5:43And that's fine like those people that's a choice. But I think as a CEO, you have to decide what combination of miss missionary and mercenary you want. And if you're gonna hire mercenaries, you need to put them in roles that are suited for mercenaries. You know, like go figure this problem out, get this started and you know, then jet, you know, and if you want to hire people who are actually going to move into leadership roles, who are going to be great mentors to young talent who might uh who aspire to like, you know, join the executive team one day, I think you need to look for missionaries, not
6:12mercenaries. So when you meet a founder these days, what are some things that you do to figure out if their heart is in the right place?
6:19Okay, so my way of like when I look at an opportunity, I've always joked it's like a sandwich founders let's call it problem/market, you know, and founders.
6:30And so the first so it's two slices of bread and then the meat, right? uh from the first thing is just like hey do these founders have the ability you know like hold aside who they are and how they're going to do it like do I just think that they're really really high quality people high slope you know high CPU blah blah blah blah so you figure it all like are these people good enough to build a startup then um from a problem standpoint what I'll just say is I look to make sure I and actually what do you do to figure
6:58out if they're good enough like how do do you dig into that um you can usually I guess what I'd say it's very easy is it intuitive now that so many patterns it's very easy to um there's plenty of false negatives so I don't want to say that it's authoritative I'd say that I get the sense pretty quickly whether or not they understand what they're getting into and whether I think um you know they have sort of the uh uh ability to have thought um deeply about the problem that they're solving um
7:28then you can usually get a pretty you can get ground truth pretty quickly based upon understanding uh what they've worked on, what they're proud of, what they um choose to share with you, what you can find out about them.
7:39And so I'd say you can usually um you know, little bit of vibes, little bit of you know, back channel.
7:48Um then, you know, like is the problem they're trying to solve is it like large or valuable? But then the the bottom slice of bread is I think a little bit more what you're asking a little bit more the intangibles for us which is like are they solving a problem that they you know uh are connected to in some way is their ambition beyond just the idea that this could be successful like sometimes I say do they want it on their tombstone? Are they willing to build something that like matters enough to them that alongside
8:18whatever other roles that they might have, parent, child, you know, uh, husband, wife, whatever, like that they want to put, you know, founder on their true identity. Yeah.
8:28And, um, and are they going to, uh, behave, build in a way that we're going to be proud not just of the outcome, but be proud of the process and decisions. So for example uh we were very fortunate uh recently uh earlier this year we had a company called graphite out of New York that exited to cursor and then cursor exit you know like congratulations.
8:50Thanks. Yeah know we just you know I think the just recently you know acquisition recently.
8:53Yeah just a couple of days close but we were the uh you know we led their seed round in beginning of 2020 I guess and uh so and then I had the chance to work with these founders very quickly in fact uh attending one of their weddings uh later this month.
9:06Oh yeah. And um I remember you know so taking this like uh example we met them and three guys they had gone to Harvard together then all sort of done their own thing stayed friends and like it was clear smarts slope off the chart hardworking all that the problem they wanted to solve was uh quality of code the idea that so much more code is being written this was at the time was like preGPT so the idea was that humans were writing the code now the only different same problem it's just you know combination of humans and machines writing the code so like besides the
9:36writing of the code itself, the ID, we want to do everything else. I was like, well, that's pretty ambitious and I believe your I believe your thesis and the idea that you don't want to start with the ID is actually quite interesting. So, okay, I like that. And then the the bottom slice was the one that we had to actually spend most time with them on, which I was like, "Hey, look."
9:52I'm like, "I don't mean to be rude, but there's a version of you, maybe in a parallel dimension, parallel universe, multiverse, that's like three tech bros who all went to Harvard together, then worked at name brand companies, who are now doing a startup, you know, and um haven't put a lot of thought into like how hard it's going to be, uh, aren't used to taking a punch. So like when you're wrong, you're going to scurry back to your day jobs.
10:17You're just going to hire the bros you worked with whether or not those people are, you know, at a 5,000 person Facebook Meta are right for a threeperson startup like and like you haven't given me any indications that you are anything, but that's what I that's what I'd be worried about if I was investing you. So let's talk a little bit about that. And it turned out that like they were the complete opposite of that. They were each very individual. So like whole was greater than some sum of the parts. It wasn't this carbon copy. Um they all had uh and and indeed they all you know uh uh stayed uh you know through the
10:47acquisition. It's very unusual to have sort of like three technical founders who all make it together six years you know you end up sort of crowding um and they talk through their own background. I was like man you know I just had to I had to check you know um but like I would love you know to support you guys in building something you're proud of. And so that's the way I think about it. nothing really substitutes in those cases for um like face to face time talking with the founders about these things. I think
11:16there's a lot of investors who either don't care about that so it doesn't come up or are afraid to ask anything hard like that like well because these deals are competitive they go from I don't want to offend them let's just get in business you know um but I think the best relationships actually start out with like the idea that we're going to if we're going to work together you know I need to earn and maintain your trust there needs to be mutual trust mutual context and that's how I help you become the best version of who you are as a founder not just help your company be successful and so I've always enjoyed those relationships the most
11:46regardless of the outcome. In this case, we were fortunate enough for everybody that the outcome was, you know, terrific. But I've been a part of investments where the outcome, you know, wasn't of the same magnitude and I still wouldn't trade it for anything because that's a founder, a CEO, a person that we found other ways to work with. We'll invest in their next company if you have, you know, the combination of, you know, skill, ambition, ability, you know, with, you know, humanity, commitment.
12:14Yeah. And to the point that you know there's a lot of startups getting funded and getting started and the deals a lot of deals are hot. It's so important for founders themselves to also go on that soulsearching journey and ask themselves all these important questions like am I actually ready for what it is? Am I ready for all the trade-offs that building the company and making it successful is I've sometimes told people I'm like look if somebody tells you that you don't have to sac sacrifice anything to do a startup. Yeah. They're naive. If somebody tells you you have to sacrifice everything to do a startup, they're
12:44dangerous because it's true that there'll be periods where you have to sacrifice everything. But if you live in that mode forever, there's no way you're going to survive.
12:52Um, and I'm interested in, you know, companies that are successful, durable, you know, led by their founders who can look back and say, "There's certain aspects of that I never want to never want to do that again, but who make it out the other end and I'm not willing to sort of throw them into the grinder."
13:09And but I you do have to make some trade-offs, you know, whether it be um the way you spend your time, the stress you take on, the uh things you put on pause while you're building your company. And but you know, sometimes I'll have people come to me and be like, "Man, I just, you know, canceled my vacation. This is going to be the first one, you know, I took in five years because I needed to go hammer out, you know, this code. I stayed up for two weeks and I got it done." I'm like, you know what? Thank you for doing that.
13:36Like that is fantastic. This company really needed that. But like how do we prevent that from happening five more times because once is okay you know maybe I know you have that in you if we have to do it again great but like you like this company will not find its full potential if it you are always the one who has to save it like where was your VP of engineering why didn't we why didn't you know about this enough in advance to sort of deal it not like you should have taken your vacation but like there was a failure case that led you to have to do that let's talk about that failure case because if this is going to
14:06be a great durable you know we've got to make sure that that doesn't happen, you know, every six months.
14:12And I just think some of that, you know, some of that comes with the maturity of being around and also, you know, so we shifted to a model also where we're investing our own capital now as opposed to other people's.
14:20And so I really, you know, profanity is fine. I don't give a about like I don't need a markup from the next venture fund to prove that I'm good. I don't need um that startup to get on some list just to help me increase my profile. like I need that startup to be ultimately successful. I need the founders and the team to be happy with what they built because that's the only way like I'm going to make money also.
14:44And so for me it's like coming back and having the perspective of you know what are you building why and you know how can we make that even better? Like I people say well what's your value ad?
14:54I'm like if I can just slightly increase the probability and velocity of a founder being successful like I consider that to be you know value ad. Obviously there's tactics, strategy, so on and so forth. But like investors don't make companies. Founders make companies successful. Investors just, you know, try to increase the probability of that success. It's the team that works for you from outside of your company. Um but at the end of the day, it's founders and teams that build them. Sometimes people say like, um, when did you know something was going to be successful? or
15:23um so I'll go to people I'll say okay uh if I could have one piece of data you know in an investment I made like you know that helps me understand whether it's success or not what do you be what do you think it is and people be like oh you know how quickly did they make a million dollars or tell me what uh what uh companies that the founders worked at and they give all different sort of you know pattern recognition right and I'll say show me the resumes of the
15:51first 20 people that joined of the fraternity because I believe talent attracts talent and if you and you see that magic happening that nexus of people who had lots of opportunities who left interesting things to come together and then brought one or two their friends enough of a dynamic where you have like one or two hubs of talent but then you have some people who came from outside the network so you know that that network is fresh enough to turn 20 to 100 people when they need to and differences of opinion that clash
16:19constructively and stuff like if I can look at those 20 people. I guarantee you I can't tell you that this is going to be Google. I can't tell you that this is going to be, you know, Stripe. I can't tell you that this is going to be Anthropic. That takes, you know, a lot of work, but I can tell you that those all looked similarish when you look at what the first 20 people were. And that only happens so many times, you know, each cycle. And so for me, the magic is like I, you know, I back the founders, but I really really care about what the early team looks like. Right. So I'll
16:48get involved in helping the founders, you know, think through and build that and be deliberate about it.
16:53How do you actually do that? So let's say you back a founder and they need some help with building out that team or recruiting. Is that one of the thing that you We always used to say like, you know, amongst all the different things. I'd be like, "Okay, so here's the things we do for you, but here's the things that are on like a 24-hour SLA, service level agreement." I'd be like, "If you need to, you know, close a candidate or retain somebody who's thinking about leaving, like parachute at any time, like 24 hours." Like, you know, I don't care where I am, what I'm doing. Like, we'll talk to people.
17:22Um, we were one of the first uh I think funds of our sort of size and shape to actually have a talent partner, not a talent partner who was a sorcerer because a lot of those sourcers just find the same hundred resumes and show them to focus. We hired somebody who had done quite a bit of time at Google and quite a bit of time at Salesforce um doing everything from like technical recruiting, executive recruiting, so forth to really um uh help teach our founders to fish if they hadn't fished before, so to speak, and how to build um uh
17:52uh salary bands, how to build uh a hiring brand, how to think about all that. She sat at top all of um the relationships that we had with um exec recruiters uh you know software h software providers uh coaches mentors you know that type of stuff and so you know uh we would find that uh well there's certain types of things that Satcha and I my partner uh could only do that she was like an amazing resource to those founders we um she's moved on to another fund since we went sort of like
18:20DIY and but we still have a lot of that you know sort of leap in and help um that's what I It was really I missed during COVID and I think you know I miss when people don't have like an office per se is if I'm going to hang out with the founders I love to come to the office because you get to walk around you get to meet the team you get to have some of those conversations you get a good vibe check and then you go sit down with the founder and you be like oh yeah you know it's so interesting like I remember meeting him before and he was a little quiet back then but he seems to like really have blossomed now and he's like oh yeah you know that
18:49person turned into an amazing team lead or like hey I'm around you know I know you have a hard stop but like I've got another 20 So, is there anybody you want me to spend time with? And like, oh, hey, our marketing lead just joined. Do you want to meet him or her? You know, like, and so I try, you know, as best I can to be like, you know, people be like, do you want to do a Zoom? I'd be like, no, let me go. I'm like, yeah, but like the next time I'd like to come by. And sometimes that's, you know, go to LA for a few, you know, do a day trip to LA just to go hang out with, you know, some of the compan.
19:15Um, so my partner Satcha, we were in LA a few weeks ago and he went and helped judge an internal hackathon for a company called Corner Health that's down in Santa Monica. amazing team. They're building um they're trying to solve the uh healthcare shortage not by like uh teleaalth uh although you know they can they can offer that but by um uh helping nurse practitioners spin up their own primary care practices. So essentially helping these people who are incredibly qualified but would normally have to work in a doctor's office and be under the same sort of pressures and be below
19:44the doctor in terms of sort of you know uh entrepreneurism you know performance so on and so forth. Basically helping them spin up their own practices. So it's like sort of like a primary care in a box, but unlike the last wave of things that also actually bought the boxes, like they don't buy the boxes, they do the software layer. They help drive patient demand, so on and so forth. So they're launched in like five states. They just um uh we did their preede, then first round led their seed and uh Oak just which is a great sort of intersection of healthcare and fintech led their A and they're just amazing. So he got to go down I've been down there
20:13before. He got to go over and judge their health which is so awesome.
20:17Yeah, that is really fun.
20:18Yeah. So that type of stuff. So you mentioned that you guys restructured your fund. You invest your own money and you're really clearly very passionate about Nobody pays you to invest your own money. It's a horrible business idea. My floor is much lower. I used to at least have a salary. Yeah. No, that was something we always wanted to do. Uh so we zigged while others were zagging. All of our friends were getting larger and larger funds.
20:37And that for us that was never a goal.
20:39In fact, I sort of feel that sometimes that puts the business model of venture ahead of the work. And we never wanted the business model to get in the way of the work. I never wanted to meet a founder and have to be like this is great but we need 15% of your company because like what essentially that does is it it forces you to crowd out other people.
20:55You're not building the best or most interesting cap table for those founders.
20:59Hey, thank you so much for watching the show. If you're enjoying it, please share it with a friend and subscribe to the show. This is exactly what helps me grow it and I am so so grateful to be able to do this. Let's get back to the episode. When was the last time you had to check your own ego?
21:15Oh, that's a great question. Um, probably every day, right? Like I think I think you always have to ask your ask yourself the question about like um what do you what do you need and when do the things you need um match what the other person and like that doesn't mean that you always have to subjugate your needs but I think understanding naming them and calling them out um like helps you manage that. Um I used to uh my version
21:44of imposttor syndrome um was like oh I belong in the room but just barely and so I really needed to hold on and I need other people other smart people to know that I belong and so it was like a little bit performative. because of your more artistic background or I think it was just because like when I got out here and I got to grad school at Stanford and stuff I started to see what it was like just like I'm like oh my god these people are so smart so smart like um I think I deserve to be here but like there are people who are just like above you know like whoa and what I
22:16realized was of course if you're going to look at certain things that they are spiky on that don't match your spikiness like you're always going to say well those people are better at you know math than I am but then you look at the things that you're spiky like spiky basally
22:35like the fact that I can speak like you know both tech but culture and that type of stuff like you know the product and YouTube like you know things where it's like the intersection of media and technology and so um I think I luckily I got past like that was a big uh like mind in terms of when did you get past that uh I got past it finally Like actually I think when we probably when my wife had her kid. Yeah. When I had a kid I think like you sort of realize you're like you get to exhale first. So like 14 years.
23:04Yeah. You get to exhale a little bit and you're like okay that's fine. Then I that's you know coincidentally then we start our venture firm right. And that's another one where like you can set up structures that are really I think uh uh poisonous to partnerships. deal attribution for example which everybody does in large firms where you also are making economics you know dependent upon that so like obviously it's easier in a small firm but like Sacha and I always said like we're 50/50 partners we don't do deal attribution we do investments by
23:34consensus like u we've gone through periods where like oh I'm the one who write I as you mentioned enjoy writing and so I'm writing more and like he's a perfectly good writer but doesn't enjoy it so he's like well I'll focus on getting the accounting done while you write the [laughter] blog post and you can see imagine as some firms that somebody would be like oh well that person's you know the operations guy whatever it's like are you kidding like I couldn't do this without him he couldn't do it without me so I think we try always to have open conversations about that which says like
24:03hey does that still feel right how are you doing like are you being do you feel respected like that type so I think there's a lot of those dynamics um because you know day by day things will come and go but you sort of have to like that's why go I used to tell startup founders I'm like look even if you don't want board like uh you know board of directors at this time like we intend to have board level involvement which to me just means you know in an early stage company means like in addition to the 24-hour SLA to help you close things in addition to I need
24:32these eight intros in addition to you know um can you give me your point of view on our pricing model it's like we're going to come up for air at least once a quarter whether it's in a conference room whether it's taking a walk and we're going to talk about like the arc like how are things going? You know, we're going to come up for air, you know, uh, every 90 days or so and just have like a real talk conversation. And then maybe as you get closer to raising your series A so forth, like maybe those actually will take the shape of a board meeting because, you know, if you're going to go raise $25 million and
25:01convene your board for the first time, like, let's get you ready to be the leader of that company. You know, you become a founder the day you incorporate, but you, you know, remain a CEO, you remain a leader because you continue to uplevel. Mhm.
25:15Given that you said you are more in the business of improvement versus rethinking things from the ground up when when do you feel like you need to uplevel and challenge yourself?
25:24Um we've always tried to make sure that we are sitting at the intersection of like excellence and joy. excellence in term of you know financial performance what you're doing viable um and then are you exceeding those expectations for yourself and others and joy like are you are you actually enjoying the work and so I think you know now that we're in a phase of where uh the you know there's this bifurcation of the market to you know anointed you know companies that want to be
25:54pre-anointed as like the winners um I think one challenge for us is always like if Do you uh do you just want to chase those and try to be part of you know the cheer the the cheering squad or do you want to take things that are maybe I don't want to say non-conensus but still like pre-conensus and um work with them to get to the point where then they you know tip into the everybody's favorite and so I'd say
26:20what's challenging for us is um uh there's if you're going to do that if you're going to commit uh to helping those people come along along.
26:31You also have to derisk that period of disbelief from a capital standpoint.
26:36People still have to get paid before everybody believes before they can go raise the $und00 million.
26:41It used to be that we could just write that check from our fund. You know, we had tens of millions of dollars from me to do that.
26:48In shifting to your own money, our own money, like I can't write a $10 million check, you know, to as a as a bridge. We need to still have believers. And so the challenge to us in upleveling is like well how do you go and create that those relationships those people who are going to say Hunter if you believe I believe too I believe and I'll write the check on behalf of founders and so because I think if you are an investor part of your job is to you know to derisk the investment and put that
27:18put that on the line and so I think that's a different type of motion for us the like okay um let's get the group of supporters together versus you know just supported oursel And I look that's like such inside baseball and it's you know in the scheme of things not the biggest problem to solve but it's definitely something a little bit different especially as sort of like let's say I'm a sociable introvert so I don't want to be the guy I'm I'm not by nature the guy out there sort of just finding you know the equivalent of a bunch of family offices and dentists who want to put
27:46money into tech you know and I'm like well I know you could write invest in SpaceX but let me tell you about the nest space like I'm not a sort of handwavy type of guy but um but I am a you know I am somebody of you know who who um if I believe in something I could think I can be quite persuasive and so you know the reality there too is then you the things that you're not ready to believe in you sort of have to can't surprise those founders but you sort of have to say yeah sorry we talked about you know this company had to do XYZ you've only gotten 50% of
28:15the way there you know we're going to have to have a real conversation about what that means you know versus like oh let's just get a few more cards turned over let's write another check I'm like you know [snorts] so it sounds like you both need to socialize the founders that you believe in and have those relationships but also be comfortable with having those very difficult conversations. I think so long as so long as you doing like all any conversation so long as you're doing it with like love and also knowing like I'm just giving you opinion feedback like this is a discussion like it may
28:45not mean that you know it might not be a debate we might not be able to I might not be able to change your mind you might be able to change mine this is the reality of the situation but let's figure given that let's figure out what we can do and I think like we're a pretty straight shooter in that way I can certainly look back on things and be like oh I was right but I could have handled that better or I was wrong you know type of stuff and I'll sometimes Don't even close the loop years later with somebody and be like, I know, you know, you probably don't think about this very often any longer, but like [snorts] I didn't handle that as elegantly as I could and it's been bothering me for a few years.
29:13I just wanted to let you know, you know, not in a way it's like, let's go get together and hug it out, but just like I just want to close the loop. I feel like I never closed the loop on that, right?
29:21Um, so I try, you know, makes sense because I think like relationships transcend LLC's, right? like my favorite my favorite um people I worked with you know when I was a product manager I still stay in touch with and that's the same with the same with founders you know it's like you get to um you get to know them during a point in their life and then you know sometimes it continues right it's like you go into a wedding of one of the graphite founders at the Exactly exactly like we're I'm excited to you know see them there and be like
29:51okay you know it's you know I'm not on your board anymore but like you know thank you for a great six you know, so I know you're really big on being grateful to people who have helped you along the way and obviously with Screen Door and Screen Door is the funds that is uh supporting emerging LPS. Uh you're building out a community there too or you're encouraging community. Who are some people who you feel really grateful to recently let's say in the last 5 years who have supported your journey?
30:18Oh goodness. Um, I mean my business partner Satcha, of course, like everything we do is such a byproduct of, you know, wanting each other to be like the most authentic versions of themselves and to really navigate the, you know, uh, Homebrew doesn't, you know, Homerew might be tattooed on my shoulder, but it doesn't exist, you know, it doesn't exist without him. Um, literally tattooed on my shoulder. Uh, oh, it is.
30:41Oh, wow. Okay. Damn, that's amazing.
30:43I've only had to pull that out a few times to win a deal. I'd be like, what?
30:46if you're going to take a term fee from somebody who's like probably not even at their firm in a year. I've got like you know um [laughter] so I'm always thankful to him. Um you mentioned screen door which is sort of the fund of funds we started back in 2021. Um we just felt that like we saw from our own experience that there was a next wave of uh new VCs I said founders who started venture firms instead of companies who were you know I think moving faster with more deliberate and more help than you know everyone who was becoming a multi-billion dollar fund. I was like,
31:15but even the best of them, like, you know, they don't necessarily know the LP community. They're setting up firms for the first time. I'm like, they get plenty of advice, but they need capital, too. So, let's start something that can fund them. And I often think we're funding competitors. Like, I'm not looking for people who are like, oh, it's so cute. You're getting started.
31:32Let's see how you do it. Or like, ah, you're not that great, but I can coach you up. Like, we are backing people who um like are top of their game and who I imagine could like, you know, find a company that I haven't found or be me. not because I want to use their data then go invest in it. It's not that. It's like so the uh you asked about people that I sort of you know sort of grateful for like um in we started that in 2021 and then we were fortunate enough in 2023 to hire sort of a managing director for it. Somebody who took a bet on us this woman Lisa Collie who was um working at a family office leading
32:01sort of you know their emerging manager practice and she stepped off like a very you know sort of successful career path to be an entrepreneur. So, like we gave her and then her the team she hired, we gave them the management company. We're like, "This is now yours." Like, because I often think like if unless you take a long-term perspective on setting things up structurally, correct? You know, for me, I've always been like, I want to bet on myself and I want to get paid fairly, but I can get paid last and I don't have to like maximize my share if we can grow it disproportionately
32:32So, they've got a team of three. You know, anybody who's raising a venture fund, you know, should go talk to them.
32:37Um, and um, I learn so much from the people they back. The way I sometimes describe it is, like I said, you know, trying to back competitors. So, if I'm, you know, humbly, I'd say like, uh, you know, Victor Web, I'm an NBA fan, so I use an NBA metaphor. Like, uh, LeBron James, great basketball player, right?
32:55Victor Webama, you know, former rookie of the year, up and cominging star.
32:59You know, when they're on the court together, like Victor will dunk on LeBron without fear. But when they're off the court, then Victor might come to LeBron and be like, "Hey, you know, OG, you know, tell me a little bit about how you manage likeness rights because I got a lot of brands I want, you know, blah blah blah." And so that's the way I sort of feel like working with these managers like we'll back somebody like um this woman uh Lu Jang started Sunflower um focused on, you know, like very technology oriented founders, dev tools, all this great stuff. She was at Sequoa
33:29and like when we're out, you know, on the playing field, Yeah. like she will dunk on me like she will find amazing founders that I don't even know cuz like you know all this type of stuff but then you get off the field and it's like okay so in my next fund you know how did you guys set this up you know [laughter] and that's the stuff I love the birectional because you learn from each other right and so I feel so grateful for you know Lisa and her team leading this and then for the to be part of you know part of the group chats you know for these like underlying managers got the group chats who yeah who like I otherwise wouldn't
33:59be you know may not be as close to or in contact with or able to learn from or share in that same way. So that stuff is all amazing. And then of course my daughter who like um you know parenting is you know people some say parenting is teaching you know teaching your kid you know whatever and I always think I'm like parenting is of course you know that but it's also being open to seeing the world through your child's eyes because they'll teach you so much new stuff. I mean even like very this was like the example I used to use of that.
34:25So like now everything has you know uh you know Touch ID, right?
34:29But back in the day like the iPhone had it but then the iPad didn't, right? M and she had when we got her first iPad, she was like three and uh she had seen me using my phone uh and uh uh tried then to use her finger to do it on the iPad, but then so then as opposed to like throwing it down or being upset, she reached over with her tiny little hand, grabbed my finger and tried to use my finger being like, "Okay, I thought it was fingers openness."
34:58But it's not. It's daddy's finger.
35:00Daddy's finger. [laughter] Which of course still didn't work because it didn't have touch ID. I'm like that's the you're right that's the way it should work like daddy's finger should open this and so that's obviously a very you know small trivial example and now you know she's a teenager so I what do you feel like your daughter taught you about yourself recently
35:19I think my daughter's very good at reminding me you have to show not tell not just tell I can be like I'm emotionally available you know she'd be like she's like you're on your phone yeah exactly right so stuff like that so I think my daughter reminds me a lot that like the um you know it's action not whatever you know version of it's not what you say it's the way people feel or you have to show not tell or like to be in the moment um which I think you
35:47know as a you know teenage girl like uh there's obviously lots of distractions for her screen so on so forth but like she's got a certain devi um maybe it's because still so many things that she experiences are like the first time she's That first, okay, how do I use my professional skills to help others?
36:12I actually really think it's important to do things that like aren't professionally oriented and don't scale that keep you in your community. Like I used to go work there's a food bank that we used to volunteer at with my daughter and we'd like bag rice and stuff like that. And um or I used to sometimes do um door knockocking for politicians and people would always be like, "Well, come on. You know, uh they rather have you, you know, host an event to raise money or tweet or whatever."
36:39And I'm like, "Yeah, but like that takes you out of the takes you out of the day-to-day voters." Like I don't want to just be a bundler. Like I want to go through I want to have the you know the diversity of being in a neighborhood I don't know knocking on doors and trying to ask them what they care about like you know. And so I think similarly I'd like over the next few decades to make sure I'm continuing to do things that like keep me uh you know touching grass with kind of like the politics and issues of the communities I live in. Not the you know
37:08oh look at there's this superstar new candidate you know across the country donate to their congressional campaign but like I want to adopt I want to adopt one of the uh what do you call them like the the sewer grates you know that fill up like on the streets.
37:21I didn't know that. that you know when it rains like the leaves overflows. I don't know what you call those like drains. Drains.
37:26So, I want to adopt one of the drains near my house and when it rains like go out in my waiters and clean.
37:32So, maybe this is like very literal of we all work in this you know we're talking about you know AGI and AI world and the cloud and stuff and I'm like I just clean the drains drains. Um, so I want to I want to figure out more of like what does um service and contributing back look like not just in an elevated scalable you know intellectual and and monetary way but in a you know yeah because I think so much of the polarization we have so
38:00much of the detachment so much of the sort of you know socioeconomic is is lack of interaction and so I've always enjoyed to some extent trying to keep myself um interacting those ways Um, and again as an introvert, ways that are kind of like, you know, not going out and hanging with everybody, but like, you know, small group interactions.
38:19Amazing, Hunter. So much to talk about.
38:22Maybe next time we'll walk during a rainstorm and I can go clear some drains.
38:25Exactly. That's for part two.
38:27Exactly. Thanks so much.
38:28Thank you. Thank you so much.
38:30Hey, thank you so much for watching the show. If you're enjoying it, please share it with a friend and subscribe to the show. This is exactly what helps me grow it and I can bring more exciting guests on. Thank you so much.
