“You’re making decisions in an incomplete vacuum. What I think many people should do more of, in terms of those mental models, is frame it in the reverse. Which of these decisions am I going to make that is the most regret-minimizing? That I have the least likelihood of regretting later on in life, assuming that in most cases, I will be wrong.” — Peter Walker
The holiday season has always been a great time to celebrate the movers and shakers in our world. This season we’re celebrating my personal favorites in the VC and startup world. This episode, it’s with my man, Peter Walker, who creates some of the industry’s most talked charts and graphics around the ebbs and flows of tech innovation.
Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, where he works to make startups a little less opaque for founders, investors, and employees. Prior to Carta, he was a marketing executive for the media analytics startup PublicRelay and led a data visualization team at The Atlantic magazine. He lives in San Francisco, but you can find him on LinkedIn (see links below).
You can find Peter on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjameswalker/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/PeterJ_Walker
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[02:52] Peter’s first brush with entrepreneurship
[11:49] 996 work culture
[17:11] Peter’s disclaimer on his data
[21:27] Regret-minimization when investing
[24:24] One example of regret-minimization
[26:07] How does Peter choose which conferences to go to?
[29:33] Conference panels are often bad
[36:22] The incongruencies of what GPs say publicly and privately
[41:43] Peter’s first data visualization
[44:18] Why is soccer underrated in the US?
[46:10] What great lengths has Peter gone for his friends?
[48:21] One worrisome trend we’re going to see in 2026
[52:18] One optimistic trend to look forward to in 2026
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Carta
- The Data Minute Podcast
- “How LPs Think: Taste, Timing, and Saying No With Style” (my guest appearance on Peter’s podcast)
- PublicRelay
- LEGO
- Nicky Sugarman
- “We Need Mega Cap VC Funds” with Nicky Sugarman (Superclusters)
- Cristina Cordova
- Linear
- Cristina Cordova’s post on 996 culture
- Matt Huang
- Ronald Coase
- AngelList
- Pitchbook
- Preqin
- Stepstone
- TBPN
- Barack Obama
- The COVID Tracking Project
- The Atlantic
- Arty Smith
- Tableau
- Edward Tufte
- Edward Tufte’s data visualization books
- Threejs
- 2026 FIFA World Cup
- Atkins diet
- Stripe
- Adam Marchick
- “The Most Frequent VS Most Important LP Conversations” with Adam Marchick (Superclusters)
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“No one has to force you to work long hours if you really want to. The founders and early employees who push hardest aren’t usually doing it because someone set the office lights to stay on until midnight. They’re doing it because they care. It’s not obedience—it’s compulsion.” — Cristina Cordova
“There’s a growing recognition that that sense of compulsion, it very rarely lasts for 10 years. […] It’s very rare to find that one thing—that one set of problems—that can get you so excited for your entire life.” — Peter Walker
“Curiosity is the art of asking questions where you’re not married to the answer.” — Matt Huang
“You should probably, if you’re a founder, for instance, selectively ignore at least half of what I’m saying because it doesn’t apply to you. And your job as a founder, your job as an investor, your job as a thoughtful person is to figure out which half.” — Peter Walker
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” — Ronald Coase
“You’re making decisions in an incomplete vacuum. What I think many people should do more of, in terms of those mental models, is frame it in the reverse. Which of these decisions am I going to make that is the most regret-minimizing? That I have the least likelihood of regretting later on in life, assuming that in most cases, I will be wrong.” — Peter Walker
“The worrisome part is that sometimes [selling founder secondaries] is at pretty early-stage companies—seed, A. Sometimes, it’s for $10,000 and I don’t know what happened there. Sometimes, it’s for a really sizable amount of money—seven figures. To me, that is a bubble sign. That is as close as you can get to capital is chasing consensus too much, and therefore, smart founders are just taking advantage and taking stuff off the table.” — Peter Walker