The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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.”
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.”
Maples: Floodgate's best startup deals have historically been their cheapest, not most expensive
“No. Actually the reverse is true, but I don't know if that would still be the case.”
Maples: Most overfunded startups without PMF won't clear preference stacks
“I think most of them won't clear their preference stack.”
Maples: SpaceX could become the most valuable company in the world
“I don't have to squint too hard to see a world where they're the most valuable company in the world.”
Maples: Elon Musk won't be able to mass-fire federal workers
“Like, I don't think that Elon is going to be able to do what he did with, say, Twitter, and fire a bunch of people and, you know, change all the rules.”
Maples: Zenefits Was YC's Only Startup With PMF That Failed
“The only one he could name was Zenefits, and they broke the law.”
Maples: Category Kings Capture 80% of Total Market Profits
“If you're the king of a category, you change the way a customer spends their money, which is ultimately why category king gets 80% of the profits.”
Maples: Floodgate Will Never Scale to a Multi-Hundred-Million-Dollar Fund
“No, we'd never be that big. I don't think we'll ever be as big of a fund as like the Series A guys.”
Maples: The top deal in a 25-company fund must yield 64% returns
“Let's say you have 25 investments in a fund. Your best investment is gonna have to return 64% of all returns. That one deal.”
Maples: Common versus preferred stock made no financial difference in successful startup investments
“I've never made money or lost money based on common or preferred ever in the ones that worked”
Maples: Half of VC exit profits occur in 18-month windows
“Throughout my career you have these 15 year windows where close to half of the exit profits are made like in an 18 months to two year window.”
Maples: Momentum-driven VC investors will struggle in shifting markets
“But I think that the people that have played the momentum game are going to struggle.”
Maples: VarageSale failed despite aggressive follow-on funding from Sequoia
“Verage sale. Sequoia aggressively followed and it didn't do well.”
Maples: Roughly 30 great startups will be created every year
“There's so many startups, there will always be 30 or so every year that are great.”
Maples: Floodgate will not write seed checks under $500,000
“Probably about as low as I would go as half a million bucks.”
Maples: Floodgate funded Lyft at a $5.5M post-money valuation
“Ann funded Lyft at five and a half million post money.”
Maples: Smartest Crypto VCs Focused on Ethereum and Solana Over Bitcoin
“So when I think about the way venture capital has thought about crypto, most of the really smartest people I know have been focused on Ethereum and Solana.”
Maples: Tech companies will be valued on fundamentals for 10-15 years
“It may not happen again for another 10, 15 years. The next 1015 years, it's, companies I think are going to be much more valued on fundamentals and what they're really worth, but there are these windows, usually they last about 18 months, where the difference …”
Maples: iPhone 3GS improved smartphone GPS accuracy tenfold
“The technology inflection was the GPS locators in smartphones were 10 times more accurate with the iPhone three GS and beyond.”
Maples: Most startup insights turn out to be wrong
“Yeah, and I think probably more often than not, an insight will be wrong.”
Maples: 2007 Silicon Valley Founders Couldn't Raise $1M Seed Rounds
“When I would talk to entrepreneurs, they literally couldn't raise a million dollars in Silicon Valley. They could either raise a tiny amount of money from angels and friends and family, or They had to go straight to a five million dollar series a round with a …”
Maples commits to daily LP updates during future financial crises
“If this ever happens again, what I will do is I'll say, we're gonna have a designated time each day where we say everything we know at the time.”
Maples: Kevin Rose launched Digg for $1,500 over a weekend
“Kevin Rose had started Digg for 1500 dollars over a weekend, and so there's no technical risk there.”
Maples: Marc Andreessen's Mosaic browser created the market from scratch
“When Marc Andreessen invented the Mosaic browser, there was no market for browsers. The product defined the market.”
Maples commuted to California for 18 months before founding Floodgate
“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 ni…”