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How Screendoor became a key signal for emerging VC talent

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4 weeks ago

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A screendoor is pretty much half a door.

Mesh and semi-transparent, screendoors are most associated with sticky summer Sunbelt days, but they’re not fundamentally aesthetic—they’re meant to improve air circulation for homes. 

“What it also symbolized was that, as a kid, you knew when your friends were home, and you could go over and open the door,” said Hunter Walk, cofounder of LP Screendoor and cofounder at VC Homebrew. “It meant ‘come on in.’ It was an invitation… So, when we were thinking about starting Screendoor, it was from the standpoint of inviting and easing new managers into the ecosystem. The metaphor of the screendoor as a symbol and signal just stuck for us.”

Walk—known for his online writing and for backing companies like ShieldAI, Plaid, Gusto, and Chime through Homebrew, the firm he cofounded with Satya Patel—launched Screendoor with Patel in 2021, at what’s now become an almost apocryphal moment in venture capital: the height of the ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) era. At the time, Patel and Walk got together with eight other GPs—including Forerunner’s Kirsten Green, Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee, and Precursor’s Charles Hudson—who agreed to serve as advisors to emerging VC fund managers. 

Their idea was straightforward—act as an LP to the most promising emerging managers long before they became obvious winners. If it worked, it would be a win-win.

“Usually, LPs will say, ‘great, let’s wait until your fund three or four, when you quote-unquote have a track record,’” said Walk. “We looked at our own experiences—Homebrew’s fund one was quite successful—and thought that LPs who take that perspective are missing out on alpha…So, we saw Screendoor originally as the bridge between the best of new emerging managers and large institutional LPs who wanted to build relationships with those emerging managers while also capturing some of the upside.”

Screendoor’s now been around for nearly five years, a time frame in which much has changed. The AI boom has materialized, but overall the ecosystem has grown increasingly split between the haves and have-nots. In 2025, for all but the most elite firms, fundraising has been challenging: In the first half of the year, the top 30 firms collected 74% of all venture dollars raised from LPs, and 12 firms in the U.S. comprised 50% of that total value, according to PitchBook.

“Unless you’re spinning out of an established multi-stage venture fund, it’s a challenging environment for emerging managers,” said Precursor’s Hudson via email. “LPs are cautious, preferring to reinvest in funds they already know. This concentration of capital makes it harder for emerging managers to break through, especially if they don’t have strong LP networks, a strong track record, and an obviously differentiated thesis.”

Screendoor is key, Hudson adds, in the “growing ecosystem of support for emerging managers,” which also includes organizations like Raise and Venture Forward. Some emerging managers naturally have buzz, like those spinning out of giant platforms like Andreessen Horowitz, but for those with unconventional backgrounds, they’re a harder sell in a tough environment, especially for the deluge of investors who raised funds in the ZIRP era. According to PitchBook, among managers who raised first funds in 2021, only 33% have raised a second fund so far. There’s still time, of course, for those who haven’t, but the landscape remains tough. 

It’s still early for all involved, but Screendoor says 100% of its VC managers who have pursued a subsequent fund have succeeded in raising it. Among them: Screendoor-backed managers leading firms like Sunflower Capital and Divergent Capital have raised second funds in 2025 and 2024 respectively. Screendoor’s strategy involves being among the first LPs to commit and taking an ecosystem approach, providing these emerging managers with mentorship, network, and co-investing connections in order to succeed. 

“I have this database of every LP that I’m aware of and, to be honest, I don’t know a single LP out there that’s like Screendoor, “said Liu Jiang, founder of Sunflower and previously of Sequoia. “There are so many funds-of-funds, right? And so many LPs in general, but none of them provide the same value. Most of the time, I’m the one pinging Screendoor with a question, which is really rare. I don’t tend to ping LPs with questions.”

Screendoor may have started as ad-hoc, but it has become increasingly institutionalized since Lisa Cawley, formerly from the family office world, joined in 2023. This year, Screendoor has backed a number of buzzy debut funds that Term Sheet has broken the news on, including Rex Woodbury’s Daybreak and Ashley Smith’s Vermilion Cliffs Ventures. Both are relatively unconventional—Woodbury was previously at Index Ventures but is best known for his Substack Digital Native, while Smith has a background as an operator at companies like Twilio and GitHub. 

“If you’re trying to remove all of the perceived risk in a venture investment, you’re just removing the alpha from it,” said Cawley. “The other thing from the LP side is that the real risk in emerging managers isn’t actually participating in it—it’s waiting too long for someone to emerge, for them to no longer be an emerging manager. LPs can sit and wait for performance, but by waiting, you’re not actually participating. You’re making a different bet.”

Finding true alpha in VC, Walk says, is in part a right-sizing game: “Venture, for me, is: Does the firm’s fund size match their talent and strategy? I’d say that for most funds that have grown large, the AUM has grown faster than the quality of the average partner, and the ability to deploy successfully.” For Walk, this all comes back to a core principle: That emerging managers aren’t emerging for long. 

“We’re trying to back competitors,” he said. “We’re funding our competition. We’re not funding minor leagues. We’re not funding scouts. We’re funding people who, head-to-head, have a reasonable chance of beating a Homebrew, beating a Forerunner at some point. That’s the bar.”

That’s the bar—but it’s also a door, one clear enough to walk through.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– Gamma, a San Francisco-based AI-powered presentation-making platform and website builder, raised $68 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round and was joined by Accel, Uncork Capital, and others.

– 1mind, a San Francisco-based AI platform designed to lead marketing, sales, and customer success, raised $40 million in funding, including a $30 million Series A round led by Battery Ventures and joined by Primary Ventures, Wing Venture Capital, and others.

– AirOps, a New York City-based content engineering platform for AI search, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Greylock led the round and was joined by Unusual Ventures, Wing Venture Capital, XFund, Village Global VC, and Frontline VC.

– Extellis, a Durham, N.C.-based satellite imaging company, raised $6.8 million in seed funding. Oval Park Capital led the round.

– Spectral Compute, a London, U.K.-based developer of a software designed to enable Compute Unified Device Architecture applications to run on any GPU, raised $6 million in seed funding. Costanoa led the round and was joined by Crucible and angel investors. 

– OneLot, a Manila, Philippines-based financing platform for used car dealers, raised $3.3 million in seed funding. Accion Ventures and 468 Capital led the round and were joined by Everywhere Venture, Seedstars, and others.

– NLPatent, a Toronto, Canada-based AI-powered patent research and intelligence platform, raised $3 million in funding. Mighty Capital and Draper Associates led the round and were joined by The Legal Tech Fund, Storytime Capital, and The51.

Private Equity

– Avego invested $29 million in myTomorrows, an Amsterdam, the Netherland-based platform designed to connect patients with all possible pre-approved treatments.

– Lindsay Goldberg agreed to acquire EMCO Chemical Distributors, a Pleasant Prairie, Wis.-based distributor of industrial chemicals. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– Miller Environmental Group, a portfolio company of Coalesce Capital, acquired ACE Environmental Services, a New York City-based environmental consulting company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– MML Capital Partners agreed to acquire a majority stake in Lowe Rental Corporation, a Lisburn, Northern Ireland-based commercial refrigeration and catering equipment company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– Russell Landscape Group, a portfolio company of The Sterling Group, acquired Utz Environmental Services, a Leander, Texas-based landscaping company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– State Street Corporation acquired PriceStats, a Boston, Mass.-based provider of daily inflation statistics. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– Valor Exterior Partners, a portfolio company of Osceola Capital, acquired Unisource Roofing, a Louisville, Ky.-based roofing company, and A. Casperson Co., a Stow, Ohio-based home remodeling company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Exits

– Arcline Investment Management agreed to acquire Novaria Group, a Fort Worth, Texas-based provider of components and processes for the aerospace and defense industries, from KKR for approximately $2.2 billion.

– Align Capital Partners acquired Advantage Investigations, a Kannapolis, N.C.-based insurance investigation services platform, from MD Holdings. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– Nexture agreed to acquire Frulact, a Porto, Portugal-based natural ingredient solutions platform, from Ardian. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– Satair, an Airbus company, agreed to acquire Unical Aviation, a Glendale, Ariz.-based provider of aerospace aftermarket parts, from Platinum Equity. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Funds + Funds of Funds

– J2 Ventures, a Boston, Mass.-based venture capital firm, raised $250 million for its new Brookhaven Fund focused on developing technologies across advanced computing, cybersecurity, AI, and other tech fields.

– Glasswing Ventures, a Boston, Mass.-based venture capital firm, raised $200 million for its third fund focused on pre-seed and seed investments in AI-native and frontier tech companies.

Other

– Yeti Holdings acquired Helimix, a Punta Gorda, Fla.-based designer and manufacturer of a shaker bottle for protein drinks, for $38 million.



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Mark Zuckerberg says the ‘most important thing’ he built at Harvard was a prank website

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14 minutes ago

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December 6, 2025

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For Mark Zuckerberg, the most significant creation from his two years at Harvard University wasn’t the precursor to a global social network, but a prank website that nearly got him expelled.

The Meta CEO said in a 2017 commencement address at his alma mater that the controversial site, Facemash, was “the most important thing I built in my time here” for one simple reason: it led him to his wife, Priscilla Chan.​

“Without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life,” Zuckerberg said during the speech.

In 2003, Zuckerberg, then a sophomore, created Facemash by hacking into Harvard’s online student directories and using the photos to create a site where users could rank students’ attractiveness. The site went viral, but it was quickly shut down by the university. Zuckerberg was called before Harvard’s Administrative Board, facing accusations of breaching security, violating copyrights, and infringing on individual privacy.​

“Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out,” Zuckerberg recalled in his speech. “My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going-away party.”

It was at this party, thrown by friends who believed his expulsion was imminent, where he met Chan, another Harvard undergraduate. “We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all time romantic lines, I said: ‘I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly,’” Zuckerberg said.​

Chan, who described her now-husband to The New Yorker as “this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there,” went on the date with him. Zuckerberg did not get expelled from Harvard after all, but he did famously drop out the following year to focus on building Facebook.​

While the 2010 film The Social Network portrayed Facemash as a critical stepping stone to the creation of Facebook, Zuckerberg himself has downplayed its technical or conceptual importance.

“And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn’t,” he said during his commencement speech. But he did confirm that the series of events it set in motion—the administrative hearing, the “going-away” party, the line for the bathroom—ultimately connected him with the mother of his three children.

Chan, for her part, went on to graduate from Harvard in 2007, taught science, and then attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, becoming a pediatrician.

She and Zuckerberg got married in 2012, and in 2015, they co-founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization focused on leveraging technology to address major world challenges in health, education, and science. Chan serves as co-CEO of the initiative, which has pledged to give away 99% of the couple’s shares in Meta Platforms to fund its work.

You can watch the entirety of Zuckerberg’s Harvard commencement speech below:

​For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 



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Senate Dems’ plan to fix Obamacare premiums adds nearly $300 billion to deficit, CRFB says

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10 hours ago

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December 5, 2025

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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is a nonpartisan watchdog that regularly estimates how much the U.S. Congress is adding to the $38 trillion national debt.

With enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies due to expire within days, some Senate Democrats are scrambling to protect millions of Americans from getting the unpleasant holiday gift of spiking health insurance premiums. The CRFB says there’s just one problem with the plan: It’s not funded.

“With the national debt as large as the economy and interest payments costing $1 trillion annually, it is absurd to suggest adding hundreds of billions more to the debt,” CRFB President Maya MacGuineas wrote in a statement on Friday afternoon.

The proposal, backed by members of the Senate Democratic caucus, would fully extend the enhanced ACA subsidies for three years, from 2026 through 2028, with no additional income limits on who can qualify. Those subsidies, originally boosted during the pandemic and later renewed, were designed to lower premiums and prevent coverage losses for middle‑ and lower‑income households purchasing insurance on the ACA exchanges.

CRFB estimated that even this three‑year extension alone would add roughly $300 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, largely because the federal government would continue to shoulder a larger share of premium costs while enrollment and subsidy amounts remain elevated. If Congress ultimately moves to make the enhanced subsidies permanent—as many advocates have urged—the total cost could swell to nearly $550 billion in additional borrowing over the next decade.

Reversing recent guardrails

MacGuineas called the Senate bill “far worse than even a debt-financed extension” as it would roll back several “program integrity” measures that were enacted as part of a 2025 reconciliation law and were intended to tighten oversight of ACA subsidies. On top of that, it would be funded by borrowing even more. “This is a bad idea made worse,” MacGuineas added.

The watchdog group’s central critique is that the new Senate plan does not attempt to offset its costs through spending cuts or new revenue and, in their view, goes beyond a simple extension by expanding the underlying subsidy structure.

The legislation would permanently repeal restrictions that eliminated subsidies for certain groups enrolling during special enrollment periods and would scrap rules requiring full repayment of excess advance subsidies and stricter verification of eligibility and tax reconciliation. The bill would also nullify portions of a 2025 federal regulation that loosened limits on the actuarial value of exchange plans and altered how subsidies are calculated, effectively reshaping how generous plans can be and how federal support is determined. CRFB warned these reversals would increase costs further while weakening safeguards designed to reduce misuse and error in the subsidy system.

MacGuineas said that any subsidy extension should be paired with broader reforms to curb health spending and reduce overall borrowing. In her view, lawmakers are missing a chance to redesign ACA support in a way that lowers premiums while also improving the long‑term budget outlook.

The debate over ACA subsidies recently contributed to a government funding standoff, and CRFB argued that the new Senate bill reflects a political compromise that prioritizes short‑term relief over long‑term fiscal responsibility.

“After a pointless government shutdown over this issue, it is beyond disappointing that this is the preferred solution to such an important issue,” MacGuineas wrote.

The off-year elections cast the government shutdown and cost-of-living arguments in a different light. Democrats made stunning gains and almost flipped a deep-red district in Tennessee as politicians from the far left and center coalesced around “affordability.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly smelling blood in the water and doubling down on the theme heading into the pivotal midterm elections of 2026. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Pennsylvania soon to discuss pocketbook anxieties. But he is repeating predecessor Joe Biden’s habit of dismissing inflation, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.

“We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything,” Trump said in a Tuesday cabinet meeting, in which he also dismissed affordability as a “hoax” pushed by Democrats.​

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle now face a politically fraught choice: allow premiums to jump sharply—including in swing states like Pennsylvania where ACA enrollees face double‑digit increases—or pass an expensive subsidy extension that would, as CRFB calculates, explode the deficit without addressing underlying health care costs.



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Netflix–Warner Bros. deal sets up $72 billion antitrust test

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10 hours ago

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December 5, 2025

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Netflix Inc. has won the heated takeover battle for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Now it must convince global antitrust regulators that the deal won’t give it an illegal advantage in the streaming market. 

The $72 billion tie-up joins the world’s dominant paid streaming service with one of Hollywood’s most iconic movie studios. It would reshape the market for online video content by combining the No. 1 streaming player with the No. 4 service HBO Max and its blockbuster hits such as Game Of Thrones, Friends, and the DC Universe comics characters franchise.  

That could raise red flags for global antitrust regulators over concerns that Netflix would have too much control over the streaming market. The company faces a lengthy Justice Department review and a possible US lawsuit seeking to block the deal if it doesn’t adopt some remedies to get it cleared, analysts said.

“Netflix will have an uphill climb unless it agrees to divest HBO Max as well as additional behavioral commitments — particularly on licensing content,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Rie. “The streaming overlap is significant,” she added, saying the argument that “the market should be viewed more broadly is a tough one to win.”

By choosing Netflix, Warner Bros. has jilted another bidder, Paramount Skydance Corp., a move that risks touching off a political battle in Washington. Paramount is backed by the world’s second-richest man, Larry Ellison, and his son, David Ellison, and the company has touted their longstanding close ties to President Donald Trump. Their acquisition of Paramount, which closed in August, has won public praise from Trump. 

Comcast Corp. also made a bid for Warner Bros., looking to merge it with its NBCUniversal division.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review the transaction in the US, could argue that the deal is illegal on its face because the combined market share would put Netflix well over a 30% threshold.

The White House, the Justice Department and Comcast didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

US lawmakers from both parties, including Republican Representative Darrell Issa and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren have already faulted the transaction — which would create a global streaming giant with 450 million users — as harmful to consumers.

“This deal looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare,” Warren said after the Netflix announcement. Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, said in a social media post earlier this week that a Warner Bros.-Netflix tie-up would raise more serious competition questions “than any transaction I’ve seen in about a decade.”

European Union regulators are also likely to subject the Netflix proposal to an intensive review amid pressure from legislators. In the UK, the deal has already drawn scrutiny before the announcement, with House of Lords member Baroness Luciana Berger pressing the government on how the transaction would impact competition and consumer prices.

The combined company could raise prices and broadly impact “culture, film, cinemas and theater releases,”said Andreas Schwab, a leading member of the European Parliament on competition issues, after the announcement.

Paramount has sought to frame the Netflix deal as a non-starter. “The simple truth is that a deal with Netflix as the buyer likely will never close, due to antitrust and regulatory challenges in the United States and in most jurisdictions abroad,” Paramount’s antitrust lawyers wrote to their counterparts at Warner Bros. on Dec. 1.

Appealing directly to Trump could help Netflix avoid intense antitrust scrutiny, New Street Research’s Blair Levin wrote in a note on Friday. Levin said it’s possible that Trump could come to see the benefit of switching from a pro-Paramount position to a pro-Netflix position. “And if he does so, we believe the DOJ will follow suit,” Levin wrote.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos had dinner with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last December, a move other CEOs made after the election in order to win over the administration. In a call with investors Friday morning, Sarandos said that he’s “highly confident in the regulatory process,” contending the deal favors consumers, workers and innovation. 

“Our plans here are to work really closely with all the appropriate governments and regulators, but really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need,” he said.

Netflix will likely argue to regulators that other video services such as Google’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok should be included in any analysis of the market, which would dramatically shrink the company’s perceived dominance.

The US Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the transfer of broadcast-TV licenses, isn’t expected to play a role in the deal, as neither hold such licenses. Warner Bros. plans to spin off its cable TV division, which includes channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT, before the sale.

Even if antitrust reviews just focus on streaming, Netflix believes it will ultimately prevail, pointing to Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime and Walt Disney Co. as other major competitors, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. 

Netflix is expected to argue that more than 75% of HBO Max subscribers already subscribe to Netflix, making them complementary offerings rather than competitors, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing confidential deliberations. The company is expected to make the case that reducing its content costs through owning Warner Bros., eliminating redundant back-end technology and bundling Netflix with Max will yield lower prices.



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