Hunter Walk
hunterwalk.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Hunter Walk, a venture investor, writes about startups, hiring, venture capital, and careers in tech.
What HN saysHN commenters cite his posts on careers, such as why midstage startups make good first jobs and why not to be an MBA type.
138HN people shared it
11linked it in comments
368stories submitted
2.0Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1What's Wrong with Tech Folks Who Attack the Tech Media. and What's Wrong with T5 people · 19 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 2Midstage Startups Are Your Best First Job in Tech4 people · 16 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 3“Winners Take None:” Coworking, Self Storage, Scooters Have Burned Billions Of4 people · 11 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4Why I Don’t Ask “Is This a Billion Dollar Business” Before I Invest4 people · 10 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 5You’re Either Venture-Backed or a Lifestyle Business: The Big Lie3 people · 24 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Google Finds That Successful Teams Are About Norms Not Just Smarts3 people · 23 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Why a Paid Newsletter Won’t Be Enough Money for Most Writers3 people · 22 points · first shared 2020 · 11 comments on HN
- 8Learn to Hire Well and You’ll Never Lose3 people · 6 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”2 people · 637 points · first shared 2021 · 313 comments on HN
- 10We Don’t Talk Enough About Money in Silicon Valley. No, Really2 people · 17 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 11Hunter Walk: Without a 'safe harbor,' AI will be ruled by incumbents2 people · 14 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 12The 10x Angel. The 0x Angel2 people · 11 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 13One Founder Told Me He Wanted to Overpay His Employees. So We Invested2 people · 8 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 14You don't get to decide if you're a platform2 people · 8 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 151/2 Angel Investing Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid2 people · 5 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
voltagex_ · 2016-12-09
I went to https://membership.theinformation.com/subscribe because it looks like something I'd pay for. I hate the trend of not putting pricing upfront. I'm just going to assume I can't afford it.
Edit: possibly $400USD/year from https://hunterwalk.com/2013/12/17/400-for-the-information-is-about-wha…
calcsam · 2015-08-17
http://hunterwalk.com/2014/03/08/new-grads-midstage-startups-are-your-…
is a good pointer.
jedc · 2014-11-04
Obligatory link to Hunter Walk's great post on exactly this point: http://hunterwalk.com/2011/12/24/its-fine-to-get-an-mba-but-dont-be-an…
smt88 · 2014-11-27
S/he should get the right people and pay them what they're worth. Trying to under-pay people results in sub-par people or good people leaving. 80% of nothing is a lot less valuable than 60% of something successful. Great people are absolutely vital at an early stage.
I'm not making things up here, either. Every successful entrepreneur I know agrees with that sentiment, as does the prevailing philosophy of investors[1][2], thought leaders[3], and serial entrepreneurs[4].
I have never once seen anyone successful say to hoard your equity, especially if you're bootstrapped and cash-flow positive. Greed is a great way to kill morale.
1. http://hunterwalk.com/2014/11/26/one-founder-told-me-he-wanted-to-over…
2. http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-retention
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8109
4. http://jamesaltucher.quora.com/The-Ultimate-Cheat-Sheet-For-Starting-A…
learnf007 · 2014-05-03
Narrow and very misleading way of looking at engineering and careers for sure because it assumes a false binary choice.
A choice between doing what you love and making a big payout by doing something else. This assumption is wrong.
On one level, there is truth to what is stated--- but it correlates more to big company paths, people who have a conservative view on their ability to leave an impact on the world, and people who are narrowly focused on programming for programming's sake.
It's not about "switching" to management (this thinking is big company), it's about taking your technical skills and making things happen. If that means you have to be a startup founder or a leader (CTO, CEO, VP engineering, whatever) who ends up not coding much anymore to make that happen, so be it. The point is if you love programming, do it, get amazing at it, solve real problems... and you'll have limitless potential in the future.
Being a programmer/engineer gives you the ability to find and build real solutions to problems in the world. If you're good, being able to build things = creating a startup or partnering with others to take on big things.
Regardless of statistics on the rate of success of startup endeavors, this potential and this opportunity make being a programmer completely worthwhile and rich with potential. You do not need to be a manager to have financial success. What you need is equity, equity that appreciates massively in a successful company. Financial outcome is a…
swyx · 2020-12-10
there's a long literature of:
- why even VCs diversify bets
- why working on side things helps your main thing
- how Nobel prizewinners are 3x more likely than the average scientist to have creative hobbies
- https://hunterwalk.medium.com/why-a-paid-newsletter-wont-be-enough-mon…
and so on. i didnt say that having 4 things is spreading yourself thin. its just a really unscientific thing to assert without proof that having only 1 thing is "the key to success". so i push back on it.
wshaef · 2017-05-08
No matter what kind of business you’re in, it’s wise to diversify your sources of revenue. YT’s ad-focused monetization model disservices a variety of creators for a variety of reasons, many of which are mentioned in this NYTimes article.
Fan patronage in the likes of what Vidme (disclaimer: I’m a co-founder) and Patreon are offering help creators diversify their revenue streams and make content for their fans, rather than to please advertisers.
Google and Facebook aren’t well incentivized to offer this kind of model on platform because they can make considerably more money allocating resources towards optimizing ad revenue. Hunter Walk, an ex YT employee turned investor, writes about this in this blog post: https://hunterwalk.com/2017/03/26/why-were-paying-for-content-these-da…
allenleein · 2016-07-31
Some tech blogs:
Benedict Evans: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/
Hunter Walk: https://hunterwalk.com/
Coding Horrow: https://blog.codinghorror.com/
Feld Thoughts: http://www.feld.com/
Mattermark: https://mattermark.com/
BEN THOMPSON: https://stratechery.com/
The Angel VC: http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/
hunterwalk · 2013-12-04
they seem to have used a file photo from 2007 NYT story that has a toy robot. Hmm, bit tricky - to average person I think the photo suggests THIS is an example of the robots he's working on, no?
http://hunterwalk.com/2013/12/03/andy-rubin-poses-with-same-drone-2007…
ngoel36 · 2013-08-27
Hunter Walk's blogpost on why this might not be the case: http://hunterwalk.com/2013/08/26/how-facebooks-shared-photo-albums-imp…
mirceagoia · 2012-04-12
Shervin Pishevar has more info, as he is one of the initiators.
Here's more info as well: http://www.hunterwalk.com/2012/04/1-of-nothing-is-something-how-angell…
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