Episode #60: The 2025 Venture Review feat. Hunter Walk (Homebrew, Screendoor) and Peter Walker (Carta)

**Hunter Walk** (0:00)
Founders should have full toolboxes to pull tools from. Sometimes you need a plier, sometimes you need a wrench, sometimes you need a level. I think the consensus is just meaning that you get a bunch of hammers with different colored handles. Those colors are the content marketing. I'll tell you why they're better than somebody else. The expression to belabor it, to hammer everything's a nail. And so I think you're getting very generic investing, generic servicing, generic standardized playbooks, what growing companies look like. And that's uninteresting, unappealing, and ultimately, I think, maybe even depress the range of companies and outcomes and ultimately drive venture returns to a lower multiple risk adjusted, set and forget type of strategy. And I think that's uninteresting when you want to sort of think about where does real alpha come from.

**Mia Farnham** (0:43)
It's the week of December 15th. Welcome to The Learning Corner, a Precursor Ventures podcast.
Welcome to The Learning Corner by Precursor. I'm Mia Farnham, and I'm joined by, of course, our GP and managing partner Charles Hudson. But we also have the privilege of hosting our first guest on the podcast, and we really couldn't have lucked out with a better set of guinea pigs. Here we've got Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta. So if you've ever seen a graphic across LinkedIn or swapped between your founder, VC Network with thousands of likes and comments, it's likely been created by Peter. So we've featured so much of the incredible work that your team has done on the podcast. So we are beyond excited to have you here. Welcome, welcome. And we also have another Learning Corner feature leaderboard member, Hunter Walk with us as well. Hunter is a partner and co-founder of the Early Stage Fund Homebrew based in San Francisco. He is also the co-founder of the fund of funds, Screendoor focused on emerging managers, which we've spoken so highly of here. Glad to also have you here, Hunter.

**Hunter Walk** (1:52)
You know, as I always said, I'll promote any episode that you feature any of my writing. I have to think of a new level of promotion. I'm actually have to like do some paid work on this one.

**Charles Hudson** (2:01)
Oh, that's about that.

**Mia Farnham** (2:02)
Well, since this is the last episode of 2025, we couldn't think of a better way to wrap up the year than to change the format slightly and just dive into some of the largest themes from the past 12 months that everyone here has either felt, seen or written about publicly.
And doing this with friends just felt like the best way to close out the year. So without further ado, let's start it off with the number one, valuations in today's market. It's no secret that we've talked about valuations in nearly every single podcast episode this year between the rapid inflation of pricing and many AI deals and the open question of how anyone is underwriting risk right now, it almost feels like founders tell us they're aiming at an arbitrary number when raising their first institutional round. Peter, I'm going to start with you. You've shared so many data insights this year, breaking down early stage valuation trends. One graphic that really stood out recently was around the point that most funding rounds rarely make headlines, but the ones that do tend to sit at the very, very top of the valuation range, you included a graph showing post-money valuation benchmarks for AIC startups by location in 2025, highlighting that the, quote, zone of attention on social and press is concentrated on roughly the top 25 percent of Bay Area valuations and the top 10 percent in other geos. So any additional thoughts, Peter, on this and how it's impacted the broader landscape?

**Peter Walker** (3:33)
Yeah. Well, in this digital friendsgiving that we have, I think that the valuation question, I've heard it on your pod, I've heard it on a lot of podcasts over the past year. And I think maybe this is a slightly controversial take. I think it's a sign of overdone. People get valuations that can. In some ways, when I'm talking to founders and they're looking at these charts and they're feeling, candidly, sometimes really bad about their startup or their idea because they're looking at the media and going, Oh my God, I didn't raise $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation. Whoa, is my seed round. It's a function of who you are and what you come into this with. So every single one of these, it's not like the range is available to everyone and it's just how well did you negotiate? Many parts of this range are not available to most founders. And so in that sense, I think, you know, comparison is the thief of joy a lot of times here because it's not as though these were possible and you just messed up. These were never possible for your startup in many ways. And maybe last note and Hunter and Charles have been on this a lot. It's not as though the valuation that you get at your seed stage is an actual reflection of what's going on in the business.