Mike Maples on 100-Baggers, David Swensen & the AI Revolution | #568

The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

The Idea Farm

Business, Investing, Management

4.7 • 938 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s guest is Mike Maples Jr. a partner at Floodgate, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm that’s invested in companies like Twitter, Lyft, Twitch, Okta. He’s also the author of Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future. In today’s episode, Mike shares his framework for investing in successful early-stage companies. He explores the nature of startups as acts of disagreement with the status quo and the importance of being disagreeable in the entrepreneurial journey. Mike also touches on the evolving landscape of IPOs and private markets, the transformative power of AI, lessons from one of his first Limited Partners, Yale’s David Swensen, and more. (0:00) Starts (1:06) Mike Maples' investment philosophy (7:26) Identifying pattern breaking startups (13:02) Spotting inflection points (23:14) Portfolio strategy (32:04) The future of private markets (38:58) AI's impact on investing (46:13) Early influences (53:55) AI in education (1:01:00) Controversial beliefs (1:03:58) Mike's most memorable investments ----- Follow Meb on X, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com ----- Follow The Idea Farm: X | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok ----- Interested in sponsoring the show? Email us at [email protected] ----- Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more. ----- Meb's invested in some awesome startups that have passed along discounts to our listeners. Check them out here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Medfavor show, where the focus is on helping you grow and preserve your wealth.
0:10.9	Join us as we discuss the craft of investing and uncover new and profitable ideas, all to help you grow wealthier and wiser.
0:16.9	Better investing starts here.
0:19.5	Metfabor is the co-founder and chief investment officer at Cambria Investment Management.
0:22.6	Did it industry regulations, he will not discuss any of Cambri's funds on this podcast.
0:25.8	All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Cambria investment management or its affiliates.
0:31.2	For more information, visit cambrain investments.com.
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0:56.1	made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
1:03.6	Welcome back, everybody. We got another awesome show today. Our guest is Mike Maples Jr. partner at
1:10.1	Floodgate, pre-seed seed stage venture
1:13.1	capital firm, invested in companies you guys know, like Twitter and Lyft and Twitch. Mike became an author
1:19.5	released a book titled Pattern Breakers, Why Some Startups Change the Future. Today we're going to talk
1:25.5	with Mike about what he's learned from studying
1:28.0	successful seed stage investments, how some of these ideas can apply to you as an investor,
1:32.4	entrepreneur. Mike, welcome the show. Thanks, Mab. It's a pleasure. We're going to talk about
1:37.0	your awesome book, Pattern Breakers. Maybe let's just like set the pavement for a little bit.
1:42.4	You mostly operate where a seat stage, series A, pre-seed.
1:46.1	Yeah, I like to say that I invest too early, way too early,
1:51.1	or even legally ambiguously too early.
1:54.1	And so, you know, when we invested in Twitter,
1:58.1	they were deciding whether to call it voicemail 2.0 or TWTTR. My advice was to put the
	...

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