Hunter Walk’s Best Startup Advice
If you follow Hunter Walk on Twitter like 100,000 other startup enthusiasts do, you know him by his avatar. He is not, in fact, a cartoon character. But, he is a lot of other things.
He spent a successful decade as a Product Management Director at Google. Now, he’s a partner at Homebrew, a seed stage venture capital firm based in the Bay Area. And, a little known fun fact: Back in the day, Hunter worked at NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Maybe that experience rubbed off on him, because his tweets are both insightful and hilarious, like this one:
Or this one:
Hunter’s list of accomplishments, however, rests on who he is beyond the resume. He describes himself as 99% humble, 1% brag. Others who know him would add that Hunter is witty, authentic, and always willing and eager to help startups and founders thrive. This comes out in his honest and thoughtful answers during his recent LIVE Chat on Product Hunt. Read on for some of the best questions and answers from the chat!
You seem like someone who would be hard to dislike. Have you made any enemies during your career, or heard of anyone disparaging you behind your back? If so, how have you handled such situations? — Jack Smith
Oh, I’m sure there are people who disagree with me to the point of disliking me. I actually don’t have any problem with that so long as people are upfront about it and open to me trying to understand why we’ve reached that point. The only thing I can’t stand are grinfuckers — people who smile at you and then talk shit behind your back. I think that usually comes from weakness and self-doubt so it’s best to let those people just burn themselves out than make too big a deal about it. But if I felt like it was impacting my ability to get my job done or based on false statements, I’d confront them about it.
With your experience in building product, what’s the most important thing people often miss or don’t do in development? — Rachel
People can sometimes lose sight of the “why.” Why are we building this, and is this feature the best way to accomplish the goal? Or are there other ways to proceed? This especially happens post-v1 of a feature where the natural [tendency] is to start thinking about v2.
You’ve mentioned YouTube’s place in today’s world a few times on Twitter. If you were still working there today, what one feature or product direction would you champion? — Corey Rabazinski
It’s really hard to go to youtube.com and have any idea of what’s going on in the world right now. There’s no watercooler aspect to it — what are people watching, discussing? I’d focus on that aspect and trying to give people a reason to come back to the site multiple times a day.
As a non-technical PM, how did you deal with tasks and projects that are very technical (e.g. infrastructure work)? — Vytas Butkevicius
Part of being a PM without an engineering background is picking the right projects. One which is heavily infrastructure focused might not be a good match. My recommendation when dealing with an especially technical piece of a project is to:
(a) Not fake it if you don’t understand — get things explained simply to you.
(b) Ask really good questions, which helps frame the decisions — and then let your engineers make the decisions. Don’t get in their way.
(c) Have a trusted relationship with your engineer counterpart (at Google, we used a product lead paired with an engineering lead) because they can usually tell you when you’re making a mistake or misunderstanding an issue.
Any fun stories from your days at Second Life? — Russ Frushtick
In the early days we didn’t have enough of a benefits budget to afford both a 401k plan and buy jerky for the office. We voted and decided that jerky was more important than a 401k because happy engineers could build more $ value than just putting our money into a retirement plan. :)
Do you have an anti-portfolio? Is there an investment you decided not to make that you ended up regretting? — Eric Willis
I’m 100% positive that a great venture fund could be constructed on the back of the investments we’ve passed on! I’m told by industry vets that this is a good thing because it means we’re seeing good opportunities. And so long as we also think we’ve been able to invest in some special companies (we do!), we’ll ultimately do quite well.
To be more specific, there are no one or two companies that we passed on that I still kick myself about, but there’s one “loss” (founder decided to choose a different fund for quite logical reasons) that I still think, “Darn, I wish he would have picked us!”
You’re super public about all the tests in your life around productivity, including your calendar. What are your 3 favorite hacks? -Sydney Liu
- Don’t read any content in realtime unless it helps you make a decision immediately (i.e. all the blogs, news articles, etc. — save them to Pocket and read them later).
- Don’t fall into trap of confusing busy with productive. Step back periodically and figure out whether you’re getting the important stuff done.
- Life cannot be lived sustainably if you have only one passion. Even if you’re in a period of work where it’s all consuming, find a small way to take periodic breaks during the day/week, even if it’s just for a cup of coffee, walk around the block, meditation, or whatever.
At what stage do you prefer entrepreneurs reach out so you can review and see a products growth before making a funding decision? -Justin F. Harris
I don’t necessarily need to see product growth, but I like seeing something when it’s no longer just an “idea” or something you might work on, but you feel like you’re starting to get the results you want from building/testing and committing to make it a company.
What was that one thing about The Skimm that made you invest in it?-Neeharika Sinha
The Skimm has been a great investment for us thus far, and we really enjoy working with that team. I think Satya and I recognized its potential ahead of other venture investors because we’d seen at YouTube, Twitter, and Google AdSense how large and profitable media businesses could be that were built around serving communities who felt like they weren’t getting what they needed from current options.
In this case, three specific things struck us:
1) Great founder<>market fit and a very talented, special co-founder team
2) Loyal community and great engagement metrics from very early on
3) A readership demographic that would be very, very attractive to sponsors, partners, etc.
What do your believe are the keys to success in launching and owning your own business? — Leah Faul
To be working on something that you can imagine doing for at least 10 years and to never compromise on the quality of people you work with. If something doesn’t feel right about a person, or if they’re not getting the job done, get rid of them. Nothing dooms new ventures faster than bad teams.
How does Homebrew (being a smaller firm without analysts/associates) go about sourcing deals? — Steven Cruz
It’s all about being one of a handful of funds that a founder (or advisor/friend to the founder) thinks they want to work with. Quantitatively, about 65% of our deal flow comes via intros from other founders/operators, 25% from other investors, 5% service providers (lawyers, agencies, etc.), and 10% inbound/outbound direct.
How important is it to work for a company the size of Google to kick off a tech/startup career? -Mike Hince
If you have the chance to work at one or two “transformative” large tech companies, the best thing you get is exposure to lots of other smart people. Over the course of a career in tech, these folks will also go on to do great stuff and hopefully remain your friends, employees, managers, and investors. I also think being at a rocket ship-like company gives you an appreciation for what can go right. There are lots of post-mortems on how many things can go wrong at companies — but if you’ve seen things go right you get some skills and some muscle memory from that, too.
What is the most surprising thing you’ve experienced in raising your fund, Homebrew? -Mike Rosengarten
Raising a venture fund is just like raising for a startup. You take a lot of meetings and look for investors who seem like good partners. When we were raising Fund 1, some LPs thought the fact there were two of us (Satya, Hunter) was great — in their minds, partnerships work better for smaller funds. Others said they prefer single GP seed funds.
We’ve raised two funds so far —the third will likely be in 2017/18. The first fund felt like raising a seed round (based on reputation and pitch). The second fund felt more like an A round (momentum!). The third will be more like a B round (metrics!).
If you want more wisdom from some of the most interesting people in the startup world and beyond, check out Product Hunt’s upcoming list of LIVE Chats:
