Mike Maples Jr.
Co-Founder and Partner, Floodgate. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutiveoperatorauthorhost@m2jr ↗LinkedIn ↗floodgate.com ↗
Mike Maples, Jr. is a seed-stage investor and co-founder of Floodgate who backed early breakout companies including Twitter, Lyft, and Twitch. Previously an operating executive and founder involved in startup IPOs such as Tivoli Systems and Motive, he also co-authored the book Pattern Breakers.
1shows
1appearances
43statements
1resolved
0supported
1contradicted
0%fully supported
Everything Mike Maples Jr. said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Maples: Real Monopolies Require Government Coercion to Survive
“It is extraordinarily difficult to maintain a monopoly. That's not coercive. So like, you know, the only real monopolies that exists can be granted by the government and can be coercively maintained.”
Maples: Startups Win by Being Radically Different, Not Just Better
“So startups never win by being better. Better isn't enough. Better doesn't matter. Only by being radically different can a startup make a radical difference.”
Regulatory Startups Are Disadvantaged Unless They Helped Write the Law
“If you're harnessing a regulatory inflection, I hope you were involved in helping that law get written, because very few laws get passed just out of the goodness of people's heart. Usually there's a set of people who are lobbying for those laws. Usually they h…”
Maples: Startups Without Inflections Cannot Build Radically Transformative Businesses
“Either it embodies an inflection. You just haven't thought about it enough, or it doesn't embody an inflection, which probably means you're solving present pain for present customers for present unmet needs. And you might build a reasonable business doing that…”
Justin Kan Started Atrium for Founder Status Rather Than Legal Passion
“The problem was Justin Kahn wasn't passionate about the legal field. He was starting Atrium largely because he wanted to be a higher status founder, and I really appreciate the fact that he's open about that, so he wanted to be in the pantheon with Patrick Col…”
Breakthrough Early Adopters Buy for Aesthetic Reasons Rather Than Practical Ones
“They believed in an aesthetically different superior future, and that's why early customers move. They move for aesthetic reasons rather than practical reasons. The same reason that people buy art. They buy into the aesthetic vision of the artist.”
Seed Investing Is the Exact Opposite of Buffett's Margin of Safety
“It's like Buffett and Munger talk about your margin of safety when you buy a stock. It was the intrinsic value of the stock higher than the price of the stock. My business is the opposite. My business is margin of asymmetric upside if it works.”
The AI Sector Has Tons of Technological Inflections but Lacks Insights
“So I would say that AI is characterized by tons of massive inflections and not enough insights.”
Maples: Startup founders ignore moats because they have nothing to protect
“Founders don't care about moats. They don't have anything to protect. They have the ability to disrupt by bending the arc of the present to a different future.”
Maples: AI startups usually possess inflections rather than foundational insights
“The first thing I've noticed is the AI startups that pitch me much more often have inflections than insights.”
Maples: AI will create massive value for startups over incumbents
“And so I think that's true of AI, and I think we're kind of in this five-year window where it's not completely obvious where to play, just like it wasn't completely obvious in the first five years of the internet, but all my instincts tell me that it's going t…”
Maples: Digitally specifiable high-skill jobs face the highest AI substitution risk
“There are fields where the people in that field are very smart, but if they could be completely digitally specified those people are more at risk than people who, Do things that can't be completely digitally specified because then AI cannot be a substitute as …”
Maples: A correct insight lets founders navigate past failed initial implementations
“If you have the right insight and we'll get to some of this, you have a first mover advantage into the future. And so a lot of times your first implementation won't be right, but if your insight is correct, you can navigate the implementation to the right impl…”
Maples: Pitch quality has nothing to do with whether to invest
“Just because the presentation is good or bad, it has nothing to do with whether you should necessarily invest or not. Sometimes you have to be awake to the possibility of what it's going to be, regardless of how messed up the presentation is.”
Maples: Contrarianism is just another form of conformity
“Being non-consensus is not the same as being contrarian. You know, being contrarian is another form of conformity because it's still relative to somebody else.”
Maples: Targeting big incumbent-defined markets is a strategic trap
“The mistake that a lot of founders make, and it's very understandable. They say, I want to go after big market opportunities. So they analyze big markets. They find unserved customers. With unmet needs in under addressed markets. So then they go build a produc…”
Maples: Opinions About the Future Are Invalid Unless Founders Live in It
“If you're not living in the future, you don't, your opinion about it isn't valid. It's kind of like saying, I think a customer will do X and you've never talked to a customer. I'm like, okay, your opinion is interesting, but irrelevant. And so the only relevan…”
Maples: Startups can only win where desperate demand outweighs execution quality
“The only chance for a startup to win is to win on a playing field where better doesn't matter. Where execution isn't as important as gotta have that thing. I'll take any version of it you give me because I am desperate for it.”
Maples: Answering every investor objection creates an obscure 'Franken deck'
“A lot of times, this is the other thing I see happen is the poor founder will get advice from 20 different people about their pitch deck. And a lot of the people giving them advice are not believers in that different future. They're giving generic startup advi…”
Maples: Startups spend all raised capital within 18 months regardless of amount
“Startups almost always spend their money in 18 months regardless of the amount? And I said, yeah, I call it Mike's Law. It almost always happens. I said, because once you have the money, all the pressure is on you to spend it.”
Maples: Searching for market white space causes startup failure
“Insights are the bedrock of a great startup. And the failure mode in insight development is to live in the present and to look for market white space. Because if you're looking for gaps in today's markets, chances are lots of people have tried that. And if you…”
Maples: Startups should charge customers even when products are half-done
“We'd be better off charging a price when the product's half done, because, you know, then we're going to find out how visceral is the pain and how compelling is the value that we're here to deliver for them.”
Maples: Software-defined networks will replace traditional corporate hierarchies across every sector
“Every sector of the economy Is going to get reimagined from a traditional hierarchical corporation to a software defined network that has machine platform and crowd intelligence.”
Maples: Customers failing previous solution attempts validates startup market need
“And you know, you're on the right scent when they say, oh yeah, we tried that already before, but it didn't work. And most people think that's bad, but it's good. And the reason it's good is because they know they have the problem. And they've actually done so…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Mike's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Co-Founder and Partner, Floodgate | 1 | 43 | 0% 0/1 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |