In this episode of Invisible Ink, Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, joins Shubha Chakravarthy to cut through startup hype with real data from 60,000 startups and 3,000 venture funds. Peter is one of the most sought after data experts in the world of startups, and his posts and reports on the latest startup data are widely anticipated and read.

In this episode, Peter shares his thoughtful, data-driven take on:

Why venture capital became the default path for founders and why the data says that assumption is quietly breaking down
The single cap table decision made at incorporation that can make a company effectively unfundable years later
Why academic and deep tech founders systematically misjudge equity tradeoffs and the early signal investors notice immediately
The uncomfortable truth about advisor equity and how well intentioned generosity quietly hollows out founder ownership
What Carta’s data reveals about how much equity actually matters and where founders obsess over the wrong numbers
Why SAFEs feel founder friendly early and how they quietly reshape ownership when it is too late to undo
The cap table red flags investors rarely say out loud but almost always notice
Why most startup employees never make money on their equity even when the company does well
The counterintuitive metric that matters more than revenue in the earliest days and how it aligns an entire company
Why fundraising treated as a long slow conversation almost always fails and what disciplined founders do instead
The myth of founders being pushed out by VCs and what actually determines who stays in control
The hardest mindset shift founders must make to survive the journey long before outcomes exits or valuations are known

and much more!