Mike Maples on Building Successful Startups and Venture Funds

Erik is joined on this episode by Mike Maples (@m2jr) of Floodgate. They Discuss:

- Have all of the low hanging fruit of startup ideas been picked
- How do the best founders approach entrepreneurship
- Mike’s thoughts on the various conventional wisdoms of building startups
- The power of “change events” for startup creation
- How important is market timing
- How important is it for your idea to be non-consensus
- What makes a great founding team
- Can you predict product market fit
- Why do co-founder breakups happen and how do you prevent them
- How do you know when you have an insight that’s worth pursuing
- Thoughts on the Operator Angel movement
- What does VC look like a decade from now
- The relationship between VCs and their LPs
- Investing in non-tech businesses
- Can crypto disrupt the VC model
- Mental models for what makes a successful investor


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Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.