Hunterwalk.com
What Happens When A Founder Wants To Stop Versus Pivot?
Fred Wilson’s ‘Pivot or Fail’ post earlier this week was especially timely for me. Now that my friend Jason Jacobs shared his own experience of winding down Two Way Labs, I can mo…
As a Seed Investor, Do I Want Softbank to Invest In My Best Companies Or Not?
Oh boy, conference season in the venture world and one enduring question this year has been “What to do about the Vision Fund?” It’s been a topic of lobby conversations, off-the-r…
Finding Yourself In Places That Weren’t Built For You
“I’m tall, male, white, straight and wealthy. If it wasn’t for that ‘Jewish’ thing, I’d be fine,” I’d joked to another politically progressive friend…
GOP’s Voter Suppression Playbook for 2017 Is Real and Treasonous
An admission: as an upper-class white male in an unflinchingly Blue state, I was previously naive about the extent to which voter disenfranchisement had already impacted our country over the past d…
Dear Future Team Member, I Originally Didn’t Want You But I’m Glad You’re Here (aka Homebrew is Hiring)
Dear [NAME] – Welcome to Homebrew! I’m so glad you decided to join our team. I’ve done a ton of hiring and truly believe People Choose Companies, not the other way around. You lef…
Why I Care About Problem Size More Than Market Size
For seed investors, overfocusing on TAM (total addressable market) can be a trap. It causes founders to think that displaying a generic sizable dollar stat (“$150 billion is spent on Educatio…
A Strong Cold Email Always Beats A Weak Warm One
The “always find a warm intro to a VC” axiom is misunderstood. Its intent was to suggest that a mutual connection who can vouch for an entrepreneur’s abilities, experience and per…
Gee, Male: Using My Inbox As a Window To Gender Bias
If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. That’s why role models and representation is so important in changing the ratios of tech as we seek to build a more inclusive community that …
Second Seeds: The New Normal But Know This…
I delete my tweets periodically, so wanted to capture some good discussions regarding seed bridges and founder/investor expectations. These two previous blog posts provide context The Three Types o…
Don’t Mess Up Tumblr: Five Lessons Learned from YouTube
When Google purchased YouTube there was lots of skepticism and outright derision. Today analysts estimate its enterprise value is approaching $20 billion. So I guess it all worked out, eh? Being on…
Investing Outside Of Silicon Valley: Now More Than Ever (Where “Ever” = 2013)
Homebrew is making more investments outside of Silicon Valley than we have in our history! That statement might be more dramatic if our firm was founded in 1983 instead of 2013, but speaks to a han…
“The folks who have the most outsized successes are the least likely people to have been doing it for the money” – Jason Shellen Reflecting On His Time At Google, Startups
Jason Shellen and I overlapped at Google but for some reason, our best conversations always happened outside of the Plex – like on a bus heading to Google’s pre-TED dinner in Monterey, …
“You need to be extremely good at picking up on subtleties and subtext in communication and this is not something men are famous for” – Taylor Lorenz on covering Internet Culture
I love anthropology even more than I love algorithms. Watching people use my products like Second Life and YouTube was always fascinating because unexpected things happened every day – emerge…
Why This Latest Facebook Feature Is Likely About Civility, Not Virality
It’s hostage-movie gospel that you must get kidnappers to use your name, look at pictures of your family, learn about your life, anything that humanizes you and makes it more difficult for th…
Me! On the Digiday Podcast (Transcript & Link)
Brian Morrissey is EIC of Digiday and we met online. That’s less of a confession and more an admission that I was surprised to be invited on to his podcast, given that they usually focus on t…