Mike Maples
Founding Partner, Floodgate · 1 appearance on the record.
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investorfounderoperatorexecutiveauthor@m2jr ↗LinkedIn ↗floodgate.com ↗
Mike Maples Jr. is a prominent early-stage investor who backed foundational technology companies including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, and Okta at the seed stage. Prior to co-founding Floodgate, he was an operating executive at Tivoli Systems and Motive, and he co-authored the 2024 book Pattern Breakers.
22statements → 6claims → 1claims resolved → 3.86/5average certainty → 2.5/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓
1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
5 predictions · 1 assertion · 2 opinions · 13 insights · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 5 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.
How they sound: not measured why? →
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 on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Mike Maples said on My First Million that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Maples: Decentralized cloud societies will eventually function like future nation-states
“What I think happens at the limit is that all of these different cloud cultures are like their own societies.
And so right now the main, main organizing principle of society is the nation state, which is also an economies of scale centric model.
Right.
But if …”
Maples: Great startup founders act like time travelers visualizing different futures
“If you want to start a great startup, don't try to think of a startup. And the reason for that is that great startup founders are like time travelers, and they get out of the present, and they visualize different futures that are a breakthrough, that break fre…”
Maples: Startups can only beat incumbents by riding major technological inflections
“Only with big inflections does an entrepreneur go from being disadvantaged to incumbents to having a fundamental advantage vis-a-vis incumbents.”
Maples: Software-defined network companies will continuously displace legacy industrial firms
“And so in sector after sector of our economy, the companies that are software defined at their core, I believe software defined network centric companies at their core are going to keep winning. And they're going to keep displacing the companies that think of …”
Maples: Early-stage startups are founder talent and insights, not companies
“I don't even think a startup is a company, right? So I think a startup is, The capabilities and talents of the founders and their insight about the future and what you're betting is on two things. One is that their insights, right? And two is they're good enou…”
Maples: Zoom and other cloud tools merely re-host physical office culture
“The problem with most cloud offerings today is that they're basically re-hosted office culture, right? So, like, Zoom, Zoom is a meeting, but it's a meeting online. It's not like it's asynchronous in any way. It's not, it, you're just re-hosting the meeting. R…”
Maples: Software will reduce the need to work at traditional companies
“Like people said that robots are going to eat the jobs, but I think that's precisely the opposite of what's true. I think that software is going to reduce the need for people to think they need to work at companies because it's going to all the things I would …”
Maples: 90% of early-stage venture profits come from pivoted startup ideas
“90% of your profits come from things that started out different, and so my theory on that is the way to succeed is to realize that a startup isn't a company at all, and that it's the insights and the founders, and you're, you make fun of your ability to predic…”
Maples: Modern media is no longer dictated by credentialed elites
“Well, I think that there's going to be a very rich ecosystem of all types of media companies, but to me, the defining new characteristic will be that media is no longer a function of the credential elites telling you what to think.”
Maples: Early-stage startups create movements that eventually generate entirely new markets
“Companies have markets that could be segmented, sub-segmented, and classified. Startups don't. Startups, they create movements. They create, they have a secret about the future. They get early believers who co-conspire with them to create a, co-create a differ…”
Maples: Learn from others, but never compare yourself or have heroes
“I don't believe that people should compare themselves with anybody. I think they should learn from people, but I don't think they should compare themselves to others, and I don't think they should have heroes.”
Maples: Blockchains will shift the primary value of computing to governance
“One way I look at blockchains are they're the next wave of computing and that they're going to probably democratize data and control of things back to networks. And then what becomes a valuable thing? My instinct is it's about governance.”
Maples: The US and Western world will invest heavily in tech-forward infrastructure
“I just believe fundamentally the United States, the Western world are going to decide they need to invest for real in tech forward infrastructure. And then on the flip side of that, they're going to realize our infrastructure is vulnerable to Cyber hackers and…”
Maples: Niching down and declaring what you are not for creates power
“Sometimes by saying what you're not for, but like niching down, you're very powerful to the people who care about your niche because people say, where have you been all my life? And so what you're trying to do is find that set of like-minded co-conspirators Fo…”
Maples: Traditional value investing mental models fail for early-stage startups
“What's interesting is, in our world, none of those mental models apply. And so, because a startup's not a company, there is no operating history. There, there's no moat. They don't even have a product yet. They got no customers.”
Maples: Startups must follow a three-stage breakthrough sequence before company advice applies
“When a startup starts, it goes through this breakthrough sequence. It has to have a great insight, which is something about the future that's not obvious that most people don't know. And then after that, they have to create a product breakthrough where they ge…”
Maples: Ride-hailing networks would have failed before widespread smartphone GPS adoption
“With Lyft GPS has got included for free in smartphones, and we believe that everybody's gonna have smartphones someday, even though in 2010, only 10% did. So you could say, wow, now I can see a world in the future where drivers and riders will be able to locat…”
Maples: Focus on comparative advantage, ignore domains where you cannot excel
“There's lots of ways to get rich in this world and there's lots of ways to succeed in business. Every comes back to everybody should know what's my comparative advantage and not be preoccupied by all the things you can't be the best at.”
Maples: The 20th-century corporate ladder is dead; personal agency is required
“If the 20th century was about being the quote unquote organization man and following the rules and progressing up the hierarchy, it doesn't exist anymore.
Now you have to be, you have to take agency for your own life and own your comparative advantage.
And
Un…”
Maples: Breakthrough products inherently cannot be compared to existing market solutions
“If you're trying to create a breakthrough by definition, it breaks free from the present. So by definition, it can't be compared to something in the present. Because if it's comparable to what's in the present, it's too incremental. It's too conventional.”
Maples: Be T-shaped with broad curiosity and a few deep specialties
“You want to be a mile wide and an inch deep so that you just can appropriate creative ideas from the world. But then I think you want to be a mile deep somewhere. So it's like a T, right? And it's like, that's why you read several books at a time, but then you…”
The other half of the tape: Mike Maples's own voice is left out of every number here. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Statements about Mike Maples, by other people (2)
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| 4 Big Trends and $0 to $1 Billion Startup Idea Frameworks | My First Million #191 | Jun 16, 2021 | 37m |