E43: Trust, Paying Up, & Homebrew Forever with Hunter Walk

Our guest this week is Hunter Walk, Co-Founder of Homebrew and Screendoor. Hunter has a deep background in product, including from his time at Google and YouTube, but is best known for his investing. Homebrew’s big wins over the years include Chime, Plaid, Gusto, Cruise, and more. We talked about trust and context, product, funnel math, investing life after LPs, and why Hunter isn’t as fussy these days about valuation.

 

Here's a longer rundown of the episode:

 

Homebrew → “Forever.” Why Hunter and Satya moved from an LP-backed seed fund to a self-funded evergreen model—and why they accelerated the shift in 2022.

 

Ditching ownership targets. Early-stage “must-own X%” rules create artificial scarcity for founders; Homebrew now fits their check into whatever round construction serves the company best. Prioritizing alignment with founders and co-investors over leading every round.

 

Valuation: what it really signals. Price matters less as a target and more for what it reveals about the founder’s decision-making, who’s on the cap table, and the path to the next round—especially when you don’t hold reserves.

 

Trust + context > generic advice. Hunter’s operating model with founders: build trust to have honest conversations, and keep real context so advice is specific—not just a blog post link.

 

Meeting math & magnets. You can’t jump into every haystack—so create magnets (writing, references, approachability) to pull the right needles; historically ~1 investment per ~100 inbound companies.

 

Your company is a product. Hiring, comp, and cadence must cohere like a product system; inconsistency is the cultural anti-pattern.

 

Focus areas now. Still heavy B2B dev tools (increasingly AI/ML) and FinTech; comfortable as #2–10 on the cap table alongside specialists, which expands where they can help.

 

Against multi-gen for most firms. Hunter argues many venture franchises lose “fidelity” as AUM and headcount grow—like copies of a mixtape over time.

 

Investing in Startups is produced by Seaplane Ventures. The show is hosted by Joe Magyer.