Technology Editor at LinkedIn covering AI | Conference Moderator & Speaker | Columbia Journalism Grad | Ex-Business Insider
🚨A renowned investor who’s backed the likes of Lyft and Twitter, Floodgate’s Mike Maples, Jr has just released his book ‘Pattern Breakers’ with co-author Peter Ziebelman. He joins us for VC Wednesdays.🚨 ✒️You’ve backed companies like Twitter, Lyft and Okta. What did they have in common? They’ve harnessed big inflection points and had non-consensus insights about the future. Most people disliked or disagreed with them at first. But they dared to be radically different and challenge the status quo. Twitter brought an entirely new form of self-expression, and Lyft did the same with ride-sharing. ✒️What's the next big inflection point? Everybody’s talking about LLMs. They have powerful capabilities, but there’s also mindless competition, so they’re not good investments. I like industry-focused, AI vertical applications. We're betting on one company called Cicero, which sells AI software to corporate legal counsels to automate various legal functions. ✒️You coined the term “Thunder Lizards.” What does it mean, and what new startups would you put in the category? It’s a metaphor from Godzilla for a tiny number of wildly disruptive startups. I think of my job as spotting the “atomic eggs” that give birth to these — we don’t even know what the monster is going to look like, but it’s going to be a big capitalist mutation. A recent investment that meets the criteria is Applied Intuition, which creates simulation software for autonomous and electric vehicles. The fundamental architecture of cars is changing — they’re becoming software platforms that happen to have wheels — and they're ideally suited to help with that change. ✒️What’s one investment you regret passing on? Airbnb. Michael Seibel introduced me to Brian Chesky before he applied to Y Combinator, and the meeting was a mess. When Brian fired up the product, there was a server issue and it didn’t work. And he didn’t bring any slides, because Michael told him I prefer demos. Twenty minutes in, I still didn’t know what they did. I just didn’t understand why somebody would want to stay in another person’s house; the idea seemed crazy. It was a mistake. The lesson is that you don’t always have to see the insight for yourself; sometimes the capabilities of founders are strong enough; you have to trust you’ll get there. ✒️What’s the biggest takeaway for startups from your book ‘Pattern Breakers’? Only by being radically different can you truly make a change. Startups create value in a different way. They don’t have competitive moats or supply chains. They win not by being better, but by changing the subject. And the way to change the subject is by being radically different. It can be tempting to think of total addressable markets or meeting the needs of underserved customers. You have to break free from that. If you play by the rules of the incumbents, you’ll always hit a cap. The way to have unbounded upside is to deny the premise of the rules. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups
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1moI’m such a big fan of Mike’s philosophy because they speak to the way I fully embrace thinking radically different and challenging the status quo. I’m an optimistic rebel at heart who’s never satisfied with good enough. I’ve also seen that many agree with this in theory but not always in practice. It’s harder than it sounds.