Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Maples: Skipping startup steps leads to fake growth

Mike Maples · 20VC: Floodgate's Mike Maples on 3 Key Breakthroughs Startups Experience in Success, The Rise of Angel and Operator Funds, Multi-Stage Funds Re-Entering Seed Investing and The Insight Development Framework · May 11, 2020 · at 5:42

Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate explains why raising excessive capital early can cause startups to skip critical stages.

0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I believe that you can't really skip a step. You got to have an insight before you do customer development, and you got to do customer development before you do smart growth. And so to the extent that raising too much too soon Causes people to skip those steps. I think that's when they get in trouble and start to engage in fake growth.”

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 Maples Jan 6, 2025 ▶ 11:04 Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
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 Maples Jan 6, 2025 ▶ 55:12 Mike 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 Maples Jan 6, 2025 ▶ 1:07:37 Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held 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 Maples Sep 20, 2023 ▶ 8:37 Is 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 Maples Sep 20, 2023 ▶ 37:49 Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not 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 Maples Mar 24, 2023 ▶ 0:18 Mike 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.