EP 023 - Data, Insights, Funding Winter, Compensation & Marketing with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta

In this episode, Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, discusses his journey in the startup world and the role of data in his career. He shares insights on the challenges and trends in implementing analytics at scale. He also provides an overview of the funding landscape and the impact of the pandemic on fundraising. The conversation explores the impact of changing interest rates on startup funding and the challenges faced by startups in the current market. It discusses the decline in seed funding compared to series D funding, the need for capital in late-stage rounds, and the shift in fundraising dynamics. The conversation also touches on the liquidity of equity for startup employees, the decrease in startup hiring, and the changes in startup compensation. The guest shares insights on leadership, success, and advice for emerging professionals.

Takeaways

- Startups can leverage data to make informed decisions and improve their operations.

- Data storytelling is a powerful tool for communicating insights and making data more accessible.

- The implementation of analytics at scale requires data cleaning, understanding the audience, and integrating different databases.

- The funding landscape for startups has been challenging, with a decline in fundraising in recent years.

- The impact of the pandemic has varied across different stages of a company's life cycle.

- Changing interest rates have had a significant impact on startup funding, with seed funding down compared to series D funding.

- Late-stage rounds require massive amounts of capital, and the decline in late-stage funding raises concerns about where the money will go.

- Startup employees are facing challenges in accessing liquidity for their equity, leading to a decrease in exercise rates.

- The startup job market has seen a decrease in hiring and an increase in shutdowns.

- Startup compensation has undergone significant changes, with equity compensation decreasing and salary compensation remaining relatively flat.

- Leadership can be demonstrated at any level within a company, and energy and consistency are important qualities for leaders.

- Startups should consider starting fundraising earlier than expected and focus on making every dollar last longer.

- The guest's goal is to make Carta data ubiquitous and be the single source of truth for startup data.

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Quotes

“Energy is contagious.”

“The funding winter is thawing, but is still rather chilly.”

“Things are a lot harder than they appear on the surface.”

“A lot of marketers do themselves a disservice by not understanding data as much as they should.”

“The cap table is a record of who owns what percentage of a company.”

“A lot of B2B companies can actually use this as a new form of marketing. It's data content that educates your audience about the world and the market that they're in.”

“Insight is a piece of information that's going to help you make a decision.”

“Always on I think is it sounds good real time, but it isn't always necessary.”

“Industry, time, location, these are all very clear and obvious filters to put into your data that kind of expose and kind of tease out differences between parts of your data set.”

“I come in usually with a question. But oftentimes, the data leads me to things I wasn't really thinking about.”

“The closer you are to IPO, the more difficult the fundraising market has been… Seed funding on Carta is down something like 30 to 35% from peak, whereas series D funding is down something like 80% from peak.”

“There's maybe more liquidity needs to happen at earlier points in the company journey if companies aren't gonna go public for a decade plus.”

“The employee that's hired in January of 2024 receives about 36% less equity than the employee that was hired in November of 2022.”

“It is an employer friendly hiring market at the moment.”

“I think we will see more shutdowns through H124 than we've seen in a long time.”

“Leadership in your role doesn't have to come along with a title. So you can have influence without having authority.”

"As soon as you prove yourself competent, you get to do so many things that are not in the job description."

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Where to find Peter Walker: