The biggest challenge I see right now with AI is who has a real insight.

So I see lots of ideas where I say, man, that would be really powerful.

I could see why people are going to want this product, but why aren't there going to be 10 just like it?

Or why isn't open AI going to leapfrog it with their next large language model?

And so the challenge with AI in many ways is finding that founder who has a

non-consensus insight that harnesses AI. I'm Mary Long and that's Mike Maples, a co-founding partner at the venture capital firm, Floodgate.

Maples was an early investor in Twitter, Twitch, Ochta, Cheg, and more.

He's also the author of the new book, Pattern Breakers,

why some startups change the future.

My colleague Alex Friedman caught up with Maples for a conversation about the difference between

being a co-conspirator and being an investor, why he passed on an early opportunity to invest in Airbnb,

and how large companies like Apple and Microsoft can embrace pattern-breaking technologies. So Mike, a big theme of your book and pattern breakers is about identifying founders who live, think, and dream about the future.

As an investor, how do you personally live in the future yourself?

Yeah, well, it's funny, I think I'm better at identifying those who do and so if you what's interesting

when I when I listen to your show right a lot of the companies that you talk to are companies right

Starbucks you know and and it turns out that that's a different type of

capitalism than the type of capitalism I focus on. So a startup capitalist

doesn't create value by persistently compounding. They don't create value by

creating competitive motes or by economies of scale or any of those things.

A startup capitalist creates value by changing the subject by breaking the pattern.

And so ironically, startup capitalism is a completely different value

creation paradigm than normal corporate value creation. And the way that a lot of these startup

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