Homebrew
Seed venture capital and operational expertise for entrepreneurs building the Bottom Up Economy in the U.S. and Canada
What’s the Bottom Up Economy? Enabling small businesses and individual consumers and developers to more easily and cost effectively access technology, information and customers so that they can create, transact, communicate and grow.
Our approach
Great companies are built by mission-driven teams
That’s what we look for when making an investment. We prefer to be significant investors in a small number of seed rounds each year, demonstrating our commitment to your team upfront and ongoing. These early days are also about more than just establishing product-market fit and building momentum for your next funding round. They’re when you start making decisions about what you want to be – your business, your culture, your values – and begin putting those into practice.
That’s why an investment from Homebrew is about more than just our capital. We bring to bear our operational expertise, a focused group of hands-on entrepreneur advisors and a large, supportive community. We commit the time to help you move faster and scale bigger – whether it’s identifying and recruiting top talent, getting on a whiteboard to collaboratively solve what’s bugging you, or connecting you with a subject matter expert for the 30-minute conversation that saves two weeks of swirl. We also offer office space in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco for your small team to work alongside us and other Homebrew companies.
Our focus is on startups supporting the Bottom Up Economy – helping businesses, developers and individuals drive economic growth and innovation through simpler, cheaper and more direct access to technology, information and customers.
The Homebrew Team
Hi. We’re Satya Patel and Hunter Walk. We met in 2003 at Google. Since then, our personal and professional relationship has led us to invest, advise and seek fun together.
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Satya PatelPartner
Prior to Homebrew, I was VP Product at Twitter, building and leading the Product Management and User Services teams. Before Twitter, I was a Partner at Battery Ventures, where I co-led the seed and early stage investing practices. I joined Google in 2003 and was responsible for AdSense product management and partnerships. Before heading to Silicon Valley for Google, I worked for DoubleClick, in venture capital and as a strategy consultant. My education is memorialized by a BS in Finance and a BS in Psychology from The University of Pennsylvania.
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Hunter WalkPartner
Before Homebrew, I led consumer product management at YouTube, starting when it was acquired by Google. I originally joined Google in 2003, managing product and sales efforts for AdSense, Google‘s contextual advertising business. My first job in Silicon Valley was as the founding product and marketing guy at Linden Lab. Before graduate school, I was a management consultant and also spent a year at Late Night with Conan O‘ Brien. My parents are proud of my BA in History from Vassar and MBA from Stanford University.
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Beth ScheerHead of Talent
Preceding Homebrew, I spent 5+ years at Salesforce leading executive search, sales leadership, and sales growth/professional services recruiting teams. I joined Google in 2003 to build out the AdSense team and then spent 6 years hiring for business operations, corporate communications, corporate development, and various engineering teams, including new graduate PhDs. I am a proud graduate of The Colorado College with a BS in Psychology.
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Charo GioiaDirector of Operations
Pre-Homebrew, I worked as a Research Assistant for 10+ years at asset management firms in Mill Valley and San Francisco. I’ve also been active in local political campaigns and as a community organizer. I was born and raised in Peru and fulfilled my lifelong dream of coming to the U.S.A. to study at the University of California-Berkeley, where I graduated with a B.A. in Political Science.
Advisors
Homebrew Entrepreneur Advisors are formally affiliated with the fund and work closely with our partner companies, providing guidance and expertise in the areas where they each have a “superpower”.
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Mark Ayzenshtat
VP Augmented Intelligence, Evernote
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Scott Belsky
Founder & CEO, Behance
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Leah Busque
Founder & CEO, TaskRabbit
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Tracy Chou
Tech Lead, Pinterest
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Jen Grant
CMO, Looker
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Andy Johns
VP Growth, Wealthfront
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Ryan Graves
Head of Global Operations, Uber
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Jeff Lawson
CEO, Twilio
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Lee Linden
Founder, Karma
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Sasha Lubomirsky
User Experience, AirBnB
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Cory Ondrejka
Founder & CEO, Mori
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Rama Ranganath
Sr. Director Engineering, Optimizely
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Kim Scott
Advisor, Dropbox, Square and Twitter
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Roy Sehgal
Former VP & GM, Zynga
Companies
Homebrew Portfolio
BuildingConnectedSan Francisco, CA
Bid management for commercial construction
ClementineSan Francisco, CA
(Acquired by Dropbox) Secure, private voice and text communications for business
IntellimizeBurlingame, CA
Predictive website personalization without the hassle
LayerSan Francisco, CA
Native communications capability for any product
UpCounselSan Francisco, CA
Expert, cost-effective legal services for business
Unannounced
Property & casualty insurance for millennials
Unannounced
Machine learning for patient risk prediction
Unannounced
A bot for everyone
Unannounced
Atomized, personalized employee training software
Unannounced
Faster, cheaper carbon fiber manufacturing
Unannounced
Simple, transparent software for commercial HVAC management
Unannounced
Rethinking retail using computer vision
Unannounced
Elegant, functional family kitchen appliance
Supporting Investments
Homebrew makes small, supporting investments in companies founded by teams well-known to us but operating in sectors, stages or financial structures that are not a fit with our focus on seed stage companies building within the Bottom Up Economy.
Abacus
Anchor
Bowery
Cardiogram
Chain
Cheddar
Cruise
Curbside
data.world
eero
Estimote
Even
Gusto
Hivemapper
Jewelbots
Nuzzel
Perlara
Plaid
Prefer
Reserve
Radio Public
TrueAccord
Wagon
Modern, collaborative SQL editing
(Acquired by Box)
Unannounced
Consumer spending analytics
Unannounced
Text messaging exposed
Unannounced
Actionable consumer financial data
Unannounced
Autonomous robots for localities
Unannounced
Beautiful, data-driven communications for business
Select Prior Investments
The companies below represent investments made by the Homebrew team, either in a professional or angel investing capacity, prior to the formation of Homebrew.
Viewpoints
Read
- Diversity at Early Stage Startups
- Compensation at Startups
- Advice for Seed Stage Founders
- What We’re Curious About
- The Value of a Board at the Seed Stage
- The Path to Investment with Homebrew
- Busy, But Not Productive Founders
- The Two Goals of Startup Fundraising
- The Only Way to Raise Money: Make Them Believe
- Startups Are Hard. Don’t Go It Alone.
- Successful Startups Say No
- No Surprises: The Key to the VC/Founder Relationship
- Avoiding Failure in Early Stage Hiring
- When The VC Asks About Your Hiring Plan
- Startup Culture Starts With the First Hire
- “Why” Matters As Much As “What” & “How”
- A Look Inside Homebrew’s 2016 Annual Meeting
Listen
- Satya on The Twenty Minute VC
- 33Voices: Homebrew’s People First Approach to VC
- Hunter on Origins Podcast by National Capital
- Hunter on The Twenty Minute VC
- This Week In Startups: Homebrew on Google, YouTube and Seed Stage Entrepreneurship
- 33Voices: Beth Scheer on Key Hiring Strategies From 17 Years of Recruiting
- 33Voices: A Talent Handbook for Startups
- This Week in Startups: Satya on Locking Down Your Series A
- Hunter Walk on The Growth Show
- Hunter Walk on The Internet History Podcast
- Hunter Walk on Product Management
- Hunter Walk on Ryan Lawler’s The Rachet
Watch
- Tech Inclusion 2016: Beth Scheer – Going Beyond Capital to Support Seed Stage Startups
- Wizeline: Satya’s Product Management Confessions
- Agile Marketing Meetup: Satya on the Scientific Method in Product Management
- Startup Funding 2.0: Emerging Seed VC
- Startup Grind 2016: Hunter on Why Not to Take VC
- Founders & VC: Fireside Chat with Satya
- M1 Summit 2016: Mobile Early Stage VC Investing
- Carpool.vc with Hunter Walk
Why
Homebrew was created to be the type of venture capital firm that we would have wanted to work with in our entrepreneurial endeavors.
Accordingly, we don’t subscribe to “business as usual” or “this is how things have always been done.” Homebrew is our startup (we just happen to be writing checks as opposed to code!) so we own every approach and action we take.
That’s it. If we answer “yes” frequently enough, we’re certain we’ll also meet our other goals – generating substantial returns for our investors, creating economic opportunity for individuals, supporting amazing new ideas and technologies and establishing Homebrew as the partner of choice for entrepreneurs. We’d be honored to work with you in helping turn your vision into reality.
So where does “Homebrew” come from? We have a profound appreciation for the people and innovation that have come before us. We recognize everyday that we’re standing on the shoulders of giants. Our name is a nod of respect to the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s that helped spawn Apple, Computer Associates and many other companies. We also wanted a name that brings to mind handcrafted, artisan, small batch and community-made and enjoyed, because that’s the approach we’re taking to investing and working with our partner companies. It’s coincidence (but appropriate since we’re nerds) that Homebrew is the name of a Mac OS X package installer that many of our friends love. And finally, our name gives Hunter a chance to use terrible puns such as “this round’s on us” and yes, Satya an excuse to schedule frequent happy hours.



















