Hot Seed Deals, Quitting, and Liquidity with Peter Walker of Carta
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Peter Walker is the Head of Insights at Carta. Peter is a self-professed data geek who publishes some of the most interesting insights and research on venture and startups today. We talked about seed valuations and strategy, solo founders, mega-funds, and employee equity and ownership. I really enjoy reading Peter’s work and so it’s a lot of fun for me to talk shop with him.
The episode is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and YouTube Music.
Hot Seed Deals, Quitting, and Liquidity with Peter Walker of Carta
02:00 — Why expensive seed deals can still make sense
04:26 — Is the liquidity problem cyclical or structural
06:03 — Secondaries and the concentration problem
07:36 — The craziest seed deals in the market
10:07 — “If you’re in the golden circle, it’s never been better”
12:00 — The squeeze on everyone in the middle
14:16 — Why ARR heuristics are overrated
16:13 — Revenue quality in the AI era
20:04 — Employee equity, small teams, and who really gets paid
24:31 — Solo founders, quitting, LP incentives, and concentration
Hot Seed Deals, Quitting, and Liquidity with Peter Walker of Carta
The seed market is not uniformly hot. Peter’s core point is that the market has really split in two: the top 5% of companies are commanding extraordinary prices, while the rest of the market feels much more like 2023 or 2024. That is a useful corrective to the lazy “venture is back” narrative.
Paying up can be rational, but only for a very specific game. If your strategy is to find the tiny handful of companies that can become truly massive private outcomes, then the priciest seed deals may actually be the right hunting ground. But Peter is clear that this is not an efficient market and most of those bets will still fail.
Liquidity is the real issue underneath almost every venture argument right now. The question is not just whether a company becomes valuable on paper, but how that paper value actually turns into cash for funds and founders. Peter’s view is that this may be more structural than cyclical, which is a much more unsettling conclusion.
Secondaries may be helping, but they are not solving the whole problem. Peter points out that so much private-market demand is concentrated in just a few names that it is still unclear whether a healthier secondary market broadens access to liquidity or simply crowds into the same superstar companies.
Series A advice is often too simplistic to be useful. The episode does a nice job dismantling the “hit X ARR and you can raise” trope. Peter’s argument is that sector differences matter, but even more importantly, investors care far more about growth, momentum, and velocity than about one static revenue threshold.
AI has made startup evaluation murkier, not cleaner. In an earlier SaaS era, revenue was a sturdier signal. Peter argues that now a company can go from $1M to $3M or $4M in revenue and still leave investors deeply unsure whether the business is durable or just temporarily ahead of a fast-moving model layer.
The venture ecosystem increasingly rewards legibility. Peter gets at a subtle but important point: “known” AI companies and consensus names do not just attract capital because they are promising; they also help managers raise their next funds. That means LP incentives can reinforce consensus behavior even when the actual return case is less obvious.
Employee equity remains widely romanticized. Peter is blunt that the modal outcome for startup equity is zero, especially for later early employees who join when the company is still risky but their ownership is already much smaller. That does not make startup jobs a bad choice, but it does mean founders should be more honest about what equity is and is not.
Solo founders deserve more respect than the market often gives them. The rise in solo-founder companies is one of the more interesting empirical shifts Peter highlights. He makes the underrated point that solo founders remove one entire failure mode from the business — cofounder breakup — even if they take on more personal load in exchange.
“Never quit” is bad blanket advice. One of the sharpest sections of the episode is Peter pushing back on hustle-culture orthodoxy. His argument is not that ambition is bad; it is that many companies should be shut down sooner, and more VCs should be willing to tell founders that missing on one company does not mean failing as a person.
LP behavior may be the hidden lever behind a lot of venture’s problems. Peter says more clearly than most people do that if venture is going to change, it probably will not start with founders or GPs. It has to start with LPs, because their incentives shape fund structure, manager selection, and ultimately what kinds of bets get made.
Concentration is not the only winning strategy. Peter closes by arguing against the idea that all great venture funds must be highly concentrated. His view is that power-law outcomes can come from multiple portfolio constructions, and that especially at the earliest stages, taking more swings can be just as rational as focusing narrowly.
The content here is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal or tax advice. The opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect the views of Seaplane Ventures. Our host, guests and clients may hold investments discussed in this podcast. Please invest responsibly.
