Mike Maples Jr.
Co-Founder and Partner, Floodgate · 1 appearance on the record.
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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.
43statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 3.95/5average certainty → 2.16/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
0 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 2 assertions · 34 insights · 3 disclosures · 3 what ifs · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Mike argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
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We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Mike Maples Jr. on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Mike Maples Jr. said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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…”
Maples: Product-Market Fit Means Eliminating Every Bottleneck Before Scaling
“Product market fit can be thought of as progressively eliminating all Herbie's until there are no more Herbie's. And then you're in a mode where you can invest in growth because it's frictionless.”
Maples: Involuntarily replacing a startup CEO almost always worsens the company
“What I found is that when you replace the CEO involuntarily, you almost always make the company worse.”
Maples: Conventional investing mental models fail when applied to startups
“There seemed to be a lot of mental models for investing or operating companies, but they didn't seem to apply to startups.”
Maples: 10 out of 10,000 startups create 95% of annual venture value
“First of all, this is why 10 companies out of 10,000 every year create 95% of the value in the startup business.”
Maples: Floodgate avoids funding founders who have not quit their day jobs
“So, so for example, I don't react super well to we're all still working at our jobs and we can't wait to leave as soon as we get funded.
So I I'm like, look, if you're not passionate enough to leave your job and do this full time, why would I be passionate en…”
Maples: Defining characteristic of startup leaders is artistry, not business expertise
“There is a, I believe a big element of startups where a business function is not the right way to describe an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs aren't experts in business functions as you and I would think about them. Yes, very often they're technical, but the defin…”
Maples: Compelling vision matters far more than personal charisma for founders
“I think charisma helps, but I think it's more about the power of the vision. So, you know, Steve Jobs, super charismatic, obviously, but Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, I wouldn't say are, you know, a standard deviation, more charismatic than most people. But …”
Mike Maples Jr.: Sizing TAM for Early-Stage Startups Is Wrongheaded
“And so trying to quantify the total available market, it's wrongheaded. It's more about quantifying the potential energy of the insight.”
Maples: Startups Defeat Incumbents Using 'Sword and Shield' Asymmetry
“The shield is, your go-to-market strategy is so different, and the customer context that you're targeting is so different, that the incumbent doesn't feel an incentive to attack you. They just say, ah, you can have that market. That's stupid product, stupid id…”
Maples: Great startup leaders prioritize vision actualization over crowd approval
“What I find in the great startups that I've seen is the great leaders are very often willing to be disagreeable. And they're not motivated as much by approval seekers, or they don't seek approval as much as they seek the actualization of their vision.”
Maples: Effective founders make their audience the hero of their story
“And what entrepreneurs who tell stories will succeed at, is they realize they're not the hero in the story. The audience of their message is the hero in the story. And what they're doing is they're helping that person go on a hero's journey. To co-create a bet…”
Maples: Early Customer Discovery Requires 20 Non-Pitch Target Market Interviews
“The rule of 20 was, you talk to 20 people that don't really know you, but that are in your target market segment. But they're not talking to you just because they're your buddies. The first five discussions you have, you just sit there, and you just ask them a…”
Maples: 100% confirming experiments waste time compared to negative data
“The worst thing is an experiment that a hundred percent confirms everything you believed, because then you just wasted time teaching yourself what you already knew. Even negative data is good in the sense that you now know more.”
Maples: Marketing Before Retention Is Worse Than Useless
“Let's say that our Herbie is that when customers try our product, they're not sticking with it. Well, then investing more money in sales and marketing is useless. In fact, it's worse than useless. We're just going to get more unhappy customers that say bad stu…”
Maples: Exponential organic growth driven by customer enlistment indicates product-market fit
“One of the great heuristics of true product market fit is exponential organic growth. And exponential organic growth happens because your enlisted customers tell cross-referenceable other people, this product rocks. And it's the most efficient way to grow beca…”
Maples: On-the-job training fails during startup growth phase
“On the job training doesn't work in the growth mode of a startup, because if we have to TEDx our revenue in 18 months, we can't learn that on the job. We have to have people in those roles that know the job and can be trusted to execute.”
Maples: A $250K seed check in Airbnb would be worth $1B
“Had I invested 250,000 dollars in Airbnb at the time, it'd now be worth a billion dollars.”
Mike Maples Jr.: Startups Are Not Companies, but Founders With Future Insights
“What we've come to realize is that a startup isn't really a company at all. A startup is a set of founders with hopefully a set of proprietary insights that are a result of them living in the future.”
Maples: Startups Must Achieve Three Crucial Breakthroughs to Become Real Companies
“What a startup has to do to become a company someday is they have to achieve three or four crucial breakthroughs. One is they have to have a breakthrough insight. And then they have to have a breakthrough value proposition. And then they have to have a breakth…”
Mike Maples Jr.: Startup Teams Must Operate Like Improv Jazz Bands, Not Marching Bands
“Teams are different in startups than they are from companies because I like to say that in a company, it's more like a marching band. People need their sheet music and they need to dance in formation and play their instruments in exact terms. Whereas I don't k…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| #77 Mike Maples: Living in the Future | Mar 3, 2020 | 1h 12m |