20VC: Floodgate’s Mike Maples on 3 Key Breakthroughs Startups Experience in Success, The Rise of Angel and Operator Funds, Multi-Stage Funds Re-Entering Seed Investing and The Insight Development Framework
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mike Maples is a Founder & Partner @ Floodgate, one of the leading early-stage firms of the last decade with investments in the likes of Lyft, Twitch, Twitter, Okta and Sonos to name a few. He has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and was also named one of “8 Rising Stars” by FORTUNE Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent.)
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Mike made his way from founding startups to entering the world of venture and the gap he saw in the market when founding Floodgate?
2.) Mike has previously said, "a startup is not a company, it is a series of breakthroughs". How does Mike define a breakthrough? What are the 2 most meaningful breakthroughs a startup can experience? Which excites Mike the most to see? How do the best startups scale pre-breakthrough to post-breakthrough?
3.) What are the core ways inflections can create breakthrough opportunities? What were Mike's learnings on inflections from investing in Lyft? What does Mike mean when he talks about the importance of "backcasting"? What did investing in Twitch teach Mike about forecasting?
4.) How does Mike feel about the rise of operator and angel funds? How does Mike analyse the re-entrance of large multi-stage funds back into seed markets? Does Mike agree with Semil Shah, "founders are voting with their feet and taking multi-stage money at seed"?
5.) As Mike's peers have all moved into larger funds, Mike did not, why? How does Mike view "fund size as your strategy"? How does Mike think about the centrality of ownership? Does Mike really believe you can concentrate capital into your winners? What are the challenges? Why does Mike feel self-promotion is one of the biggest challenges in VC?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Mike’s Fave Book: Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Mike’s Most Recent Investment: CommonStock
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mike and on Twitter here!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So I've always said the greatest joy for me of doing the show is building amazing relationships |
| 0:04.2 | with people that inspire me, but some really have gone the extra mile. They've always been there for me, |
| 0:08.5 | they've always supported and advised me, with nothing asked for in return, just giving back. |
| 0:12.7 | And our guest today is that. A dear friend and mentor, an OG of OG in the world of seed investing. |
| 0:17.8 | And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome back to the hot seat today Mike Maples founder and partner at Floodgate one of the leading early stage firms of the last |
| 0:25.3 | decade with investments in the likes of Lyft Twitch Twitter octa and Sonos to name a few |
| 0:30.8 | Mike's also been on the Forbes Midas list since 2010 and was also named one of eight rising stars |
| 0:36.6 | by Fortune magazine before becoming a full-time |
| 0:39.0 | investor, Mike was involved as a found and operating exec at back-to-back startup IPOs, including |
| 0:44.1 | Tivoli Systems acquired by IBM and Motive acquired by Alcatel. And if you have not checked out |
| 0:49.7 | Mike's own incredible podcast, starting greatness, that really is a must and it's one of my favourites. |
| 0:55.1 | But before we move into the show today, I wanted to take a moment to mention HelloSign, |
| 0:58.6 | a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. |
| 1:03.5 | HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request |
| 1:08.5 | legally valid digital signatures and agreements. |
| 1:15.6 | They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hello sign.com forward slash 20VC to join the thousands of |
| 1:22.2 | companies and founders who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. |
| 1:26.7 | And also everyone knows that building great mobile |
| 1:28.8 | products is really hard and it takes time. With Hedspin, product, dev and QA teams know the exact |
| 1:34.4 | behavior and performance of any mobile app running on any device and any network anywhere in |
| 1:39.4 | the world. Headspin began in April 2015 when founders Manish and Brin both had painful |
| 1:43.9 | first-hand experiences |
... |
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