Mike Maples Jr.

Partner · Floodgate

Check $500K–$5M

PRE SEED

SEED

SaaS

Consumer

Marketplaces

Quick profile

Investment thesis

The biggest companies come from founders who break existing patterns rather than optimise within them. Emphasises being non-consensus and right.

Communication style

Philosophical, provocative, focused on non-consensus insight. Pushes hard on whether the idea is genuinely new.

Red flags

Consensus thinking

A better version of an existing thing

No inflection that makes this newly possible

Founder not living in the future

Incrementalism

Signature questions

1.What do you believe that almost nobody else believes?

2.What inflection just happened that makes this possible now?

3.Are you breaking the pattern or optimising within it?

4.Who is your first fanatical user, not your first customer?

5.What future are you living in that the rest of us are not?

Fund facts

Twitter seed

Lyft seed

Twitch

Okta

Chegg

Applied Intuition

How to win Mike Maples Jr.

AI prep brief from persona data + real pitch history · first section free

What convinces them

•A belief that most smart people think is wrong, and you can explain why they are wrong.

•A recent change in the world (tech, behavior, regulation, cost curve) that makes your idea possible now but not two years ago.

•You are breaking a pattern, not building a better version of what exists. New category, new behavior, new business model.

•You live in the future you are describing. Your insight comes from being early to something, not from reading about it.

5 more sections in the full brief

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