Floodgate co-founder Mike Maples notes how saturated seed investing has become compared to when Floodgate launched in 2006.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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 …”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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 …”
Insight
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…”
Opinion
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…”