Mike Maples Jr., co-founder of Floodgate, shares his entry story into venture capital starting around 2004.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And then I came up to California to see what was happening in California this about 2004, and I decided if I was going to be in venture, I needed to do it in California. So I came up here without a job, and my kids were in school, so I'd fly up every Sunday night and stay in California until Thursday. And my goal was to find a job in venture capital sometime during those intervening days, and so I tried that for about 18 months until I decided to start my own firm.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Mike Maples
Insight
Maples: VC follow-on returns are so bad LPs would revolt
“If the LPs knew, like if they tracked, what's the return on follow-on checks versus first checks, there'd be pitchforks and like, Revolts in the street. It's so bad.”
Mike MaplesJan 6, 2025▶ 11:04Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionSupported
Maples: The federal $40B broadband initiative has created zero broadband connections
“We've passed some, what was it? Forty billion dollar build broadband, better bullshit bill that nobody's built any broadband connections I'm aware of.”
Mike MaplesJan 6, 2025▶ 55:12Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Maples: Raising $4M seed rounds just to sell 20% equity is stupid
“People are raising four million bucks because that's what it takes to dilute 20%. And that's just stupid. It's not a good way to get started, and it hurts the founders even more than it hurts the VCs because the one thing you never get back as a founder is you…”
Mike MaplesJan 6, 2025▶ 1:07:37Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionHeld up
Maples: High-Priced Seed Deals Like Character.ai Won't Return 100x
“Expensive, high-priced investment, and hopefully it works, but you're not going to make a thousand times your money on that deal. You're probably not going to make a hundred times your money, even in the best of circumstances.”
Mike MaplesSep 20, 2023▶ 8:37Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Maples: Venture outliers usually start at low seed valuations
“I believe that the outliers usually start out at a low price, because they're outliers. Because they're non-consensus and right. People tend to believe that the world is divided between low price deals with low upside and high price deals with high upside. I d…”
Mike MaplesSep 20, 2023▶ 37:49Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Maples: US Dollar Will Lose Reserve Status Without Fiscal Responsibility
“It's inevitable that the dollar will not be the reserve currency that If we are not more responsible with the stewardship of our money.”
Mike MaplesMar 24, 2023▶ 0:18Mike Maples: Lessons from SVB; Crisis Management Tips; USD's Status as the Reserve Currency | E993 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.