GigaOM » Hunter Walk

Ex-Google and Twitter product guys reportedly launching new VC firm

Eliza Kern — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 03:15:03 +0000

Hunter Walk, formerly of Google and Satya Patel, formerly of Twitter, are in the process of fundraising for their new VC firm to be called Homebrew, Fortune’s Dan Primack reported Wednesday. Walk wrote in a blog post Wednesday that he has left Google for “new adventures,” although he did not specify what those were.

Fortune has reported that the two are raising $25 million for their fund, which will look to back companies that “enable the people-based economy.” It supposedly would include less than a dozen companies, with half managed as an incubator might and half given seed funding. That’s not a huge fund, or certainly not in comparison to some more established funds, like Greylock’s $1 billion or Andreessen Horowitz’s $1.5 billion, but the two have experience in investing and product experience in the Valley, and it’s certainly larger than blogger Ben Parr’s #DominateFund, which was supposedly in the single digits.

Walk was most recently head of product management at YouTube with Google, and is an active angel investor. He was previously a founder with Linden Labs. Patel left Twitter in June 2012 after serving as the company’s VP of product. He was previously a partner with Battery Ventures and before that a product manager at Google working on AdSense.

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Celebrity angels: a fad or the future?

Hunter Walk, YouTube — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 17:00:39 +0000

Some might snicker upon hearing that Disney singer/actress Selena Gomez has Angel invested in a photo app but I think it’s great, and makes total sense. The trend of ‘celebrity angels’ doesn’t surprise me at all, and with correct expectations on both sides, it can provide great value to both sides. But this still leaves the question — why are we suddenly seeing celebrities become more involved in tech investing?

1. Technology is approachable & hot

We forget that any celebrity under the age of 30 isn’t too different from any of us. They grew up in a world of mobile phones, game consoles and the Internet. While I might wax nostalgic about the first time i fired up a Mosaic browser, Ashton Kutcher has similar memories of his 2000 StarTAC and original AOL buddy list. They are digital natives who use technology as professionals and people. Investor Peter Lynch once suggested that most of his great ideas came from walking around a mall and seeing where folks were shopping. Well, celebrities are much the same way — they see what technologies their fans are using; their managers are showing them the latest and greatest; companies are sending freebies. I’d be more skeptical if Justin Timberlake was studying up on currency hedging — the idea that he might have an insight or two into how to turn MySpace around is reasonable.

2. Celebrities now have direct connections with their fans

Before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc brand endorsements by celebrities essentially meant a TV commercial or billboard featuring the face of a movie star or musician. The conversion event (buying the product) was still separated from the advertising — you needed to later decide to hit a store and recall that Halle Berry thinks Revlon is swell. Now an influencer can often drive a conversion event directly and efficiently through social media. A tweet from a celebrity creates more product trial than an article in a major newspaper. It’s the new PR, the new sales channel. And celebrities are empowered like never before to directly build and talk to their audience. So for products they believe in why not move upstream and invest in the entity itself? Sort of like how musicians wants to own their recordings, not just get paid by the record company.

3. Traditional investments suck

Any time you are looking at a possible investment you need to judge the opportunity cost — what else could you be doing with that money. Over the past decade traditional investments like stocks have been risky and returning lower than historical rates. Just as pension funds seek to diversify into alternative classes such as venture capital or private equity, celebrities are thinking the same. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there has been an increase in venture funds bringing on celebrities as investors. Soon ‘LP’ might mean something very different to Lady Gaga (for anyone born after 1990 that’s a joke about an earlier form of music delivery called ‘an album’). And clearly these angel investments — sometimes at preferable terms due to the value they can bring above and beyond the money — round out a portfolio. So founders love celebrities, but do fellow angels? I asked some top consumer internet moneymen whether they had concerns about investing alongside celebrities:

Rob Hayes, First Round Capital: ”It’s all about distribution and if _any_ investor can help with that I am all for it.”
Chris Sacca, Lowercase: ”I don’t have qualms, but they need to pay market. No free stock.”
David Lee, SV Angel: “It’s great if they add value — particularly getting hands dirty.”
Dave McClure, 500 Startups: ”There are advantages & disadvantages, but on avg fame should help on cust acq.
Shervin Pishevar, Menlo Ventures: ”[Happy to invest alongside celebs but] no investor should be in name only. We all need to add value.”
Greylock Partner David Sze (might have a mistaken view of who the world considers to be a celebrity): ”No. I’d invest with @quixotic and @johnolilly all day! ;)”

It seems as long as celebrities are willing to work on behalf of their investments (like every other angel!) this should be a sustainable trend. A startup gets not only some cash but distribution and buzz. The celebrity gets the chance for financial outcome but also access to products which might become pivotal to their future success — the celebrity early adopters of Twitter & YouTube for example built substantial followings. will.i.amwith an Angellist profile? Perhaps not too crazy.Hunter Walk is the Director of Product Management at YouTube, focused on how nonprofits, social causes and educational institutions can use video to change the world. He first encountered the power of celebrity while working at “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Portions of this post originally appeared on his blog Elapsed Time. He can be reached at @hunterwalk.

Image courtesy of Flickr user AleeDear.

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5 Questions With…Google’s Hunter Walk

Liz Shannon Miller — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:46:12 +0000

5 Questions With time, guys, and we’re going big instead of going home with Google’s Hunter Walk, who is in charge of product development at YouTube. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked to Hunter — most recently, he appeared at NewTeeVee Live 2010 to announce just how much video is now being uploaded to YouTube every minute. But today, he discusses the tools that help creators connect directly with audiences, as well as YouTube’s strategy for dealing with the content world in the light of those Next New Networks rumors.

1. What’s the one big issue/law/attitude/restriction that you think is holding back the industry?

Content that didn’t start out as a TV show is still undervalued by advertisers, despite being loved by viewers.

But it’s definitely changing. We’ve seen YouTube increasingly included as a ‘channel’ in advertisers’ TV spend as opposed to just getting included in online video budgets. Multiplatform viewing explodes the overly simplistic terminology we use today; when a video is watched by 10 million people every week — five million on a Google TV, three million on their PC and two million on their phone or tablet, what do you call that content? A TV show? A webisode? A mobisode (*shudder* — remember the mobile video industry trying to push that one)? No, you call it content with an audience, and advertisers target audience.

New content creators should be able to increasingly realize “TV CPMs,” which means that you will have a significant increase in your distribution options via YouTube and other services. You can achieve your professional and creative goals without ever having to talk with someone wearing a suit.

2. What industry buzzword do you never want to hear again?

“Premium,” as applied to suggest that something which was filmed on a soundstage is automagically superior (e.g. “They should license more premium content”). Look, I’m not dissing the value of Hollywood and I also don’t think 60-minute scripted dramatic content is going to start appearing overnight from sources other than traditional media.

But I refuse to put content from any one source on a pedestal. If YouTube has proven anything it’s that given a level playing field and democratization of creation tools, anyone can build an audience of millions through good ideas and hard work. So I try and stay away from segmenting content into “premium” and “other.” New vocabulary will emerge as the media industry evolves.

3. If someone gave you $50 million to invest in a company in this space, which one would it be? (Mentioning your own doesn’t count.)

How about whatever George Strompolos is up to? (Plug for former YouTuber!)

I believe the future of video is still in the living room, it’s just via a large screen connected to the Internet and increasingly with a second screen also available on your laptop/phone/tablet when needed. Accordingly I’d take $10 million and start a living room app development fund. What Android apps should be developed as an on-screen or accompanying experience?

Then I’d take the other $40 million and sprinkle it among all the companies which are helping creators go directly to consumers: Kickstarter (a personal fav), Topspin, Threadless, Etsy for example. Watch out though, guys, I take a board seat with my investment and I have LOTS of opinions.

4. What was the last video (that you weren’t personally involved with) that you liked enough to spread to others?

Oh, I share a ton of videos (surprise!). I’m a total sucker for tilt-shift videos because I believe they are familiarizing a generation of viewers with a whole new visual language. Here’s a beautiful one of San Francisco (where I live), which I love not just because it’s beautiful but also because it’s a video response to one of New York City (where I grew up).

To see the YouTube community being inspired by one another and riffing on each other’s ideas, man, that’s why we come to work everyday.

5. WILD-CARD: Last month’s rumors that YouTube might acquire Next New Networks had many people reconsidering YouTube’s relationship with the production world (even though, of course, both NNN and YouTube were quick to state that those rumors were speculative). Looking forward at 2011, how is YouTube as an organization strategizing that relationship?

It’s really simple: We’re not a media company — we’re a media catalyst. It’s our goal to see content getting created, help it find the largest audience possible and make the content creators lots of money so they can reinvest in their vision.

To do this, we’ll build tools and a technology platform, but we’re also going to think about other adventurous ways we can be a productive partner. For example, in December we gave $1000 gift certificates to 500 YouTube partners so they could buy new video production gear.

In 2011 you’ll see us be even more creative and broad in our support of content creators because our business is going great and we believe more than ever in the ability for great content to be successful on YouTube. Whether it was produced by one person in their backyard or 1,000 people on a Hollywood backlot, we’re going to help you accomplish your goals.

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35 Hours of Video a Minute Now Uploaded to YouTube

Liz Shannon Miller — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:54:56 +0000

Update that old statistic — more than 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, Google’s Director of Product Management Hunter Walk announced at NewTeeVee Live today. But the conversation focused on YouTube’s increasing multi-platform approach to content distribution, with a focus moving, in Walk’s words, “from a device-centric world to a user-centered world.”

Hundreds of the YouTube partners contributing to that 35 hours a minute of video are now making six-figure annual incomes, Walk said, and YouTube is working to create more lightweight editing tools for users (presumably along the lines of the current YouTube editor).

The glut of content now being loaded onto YouTube means that the YouTube team, according to Walk, is focused on the question of discover, in an effort to create “sessions” for users as opposed to the viewing of single streams.

To that end comes the launch of YouTube Topics, a machine-oriented tagging system for YouTube videos that take user data from videos as well as other meta-data to create a broader picture of related content, as well as allowing users to filter search results with specific options.

And the aim is to have the YouTube audience engaging with that content across their computers as well as other devices. Walk said that there are currently 150 million mobile playbacks, and that YouTube Leanback is helping them move onto the television — or any large screen.

“People talk about TV Everywhere, but I think of it as content everywhere,” Walk said. “People want to connect with content they care about, and they want it on every screen.”

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YouTube Considers Autoplay and Timed Playlists

Liz Gannes — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:08:35 +0000

What are some potential future features of YouTube? From a New York Times story today:

An automatically playing stream of clips customized to a user, instead of today’s list of suggested videos, which a user must click to play. “The idea is to push more videos at users in the hope of allowing them to abandon the keyboard and increasingly experience YouTube from the couch.”
“An ‘I’m feeling bored’ button next to the search box, echoing Google’s famous ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button.”
A way for users to tell YouTube how long they want to be entertained so that the site could make a custom playlist of that length.

The ideas mentioned above are caveated as potential test features being brainstormed, but the rest of the Times story will be familiar to NewTeeVee readers, covering director of product management Hunter Walk and his team’s efforts to get users to spend more time on the site. It’s an interesting but not new topic; I interviewed Walk about the YouTube user experience at our NewTeeVee Live conference last month, where he announced an upgrade to 1080p stream support (see video from the session embedded blow). And The Wall Street Journal had an extremely similar story this summer, with the example of a user becoming fatigued from watching tons of Van Halen videos and needing to be diverted to related or even serendipitously different content (instead, the Times story uses the very different example of Shaquille O’Neal fatigue).

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Ustream and Justin, Watch Out: YouTube Is Getting Ready for Real-Time Video

Janko Roettgers — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:52:53 +0000

YouTube streamed yet another live music event yesterday, broadcasting Alicia Key’s Keep a Child Alive benefit concert from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. Google is keeping mum about how many viewers tuned in, but similar live events have proven to draw big crowds in the past: U2′s live stream generated 10 million views in October, and the Foo Fighters clocked 440,000 live streams on Livestream.com about a month ago. Of course, even with numbers that impressive, one has to ask: What’s in it for YouTube?

That’s what I wanted to know from Hunter Walk, YouTube’s director of Product Management, when I interviewed him at NewTeeVee Live last month, and he told me that Google views live streams like these as part of a bigger strategy to get YouTube ready for the real-time video web. Walk didn’t want to comment on any plans for personal live streaming, but he made one thing clear: The technology side of live streaming would be easy to master for Google. Ustream and Justin.tv better take notice.

There have long been speculations that YouTube might one day enter the live streaming world, a domain that has been dominated by startups like Ustream, Justin.tv, Qik and Stickam. In fact, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen stated during an interview in early 2008 that the site would do live video by the end of that year. That deadline has long passed, and Walk simply called Chen’s announcement “speculation” when I talked to him at NewTeeVee Live without giving any further details about plans for personal live streaming.

That doesn’t mean YouTube has ruled out doing live streaming, at least not for technical reasons. “There is really no particular technology challenge to us delivering any type of video,” he said, adding that it’s more a question of growing YouTube as a community and a business.

Still, Google clearly sees the signs of live video on the wall. “We are moving very quickly towards a real-time video web, and it’s driven primarily by mobile phones,” Hunt told me, adding that Google sees spikes in mobile video uploads every time a new device like the Droid or the iPhone 3GS enters the market. YouTube has seen a 2,000 percent increase in mobile video uploads this year alone, according to Hunt.

Google is reacting to this trend by making mobile video a more instantaneous experience. Hunt told me that YouTube has been trying to bring down the processing time of video uploads from minutes closer to 30 seconds. “That’s what I would call almost near real time,” he added.

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