2 IPO’s ➡️ 8x Midas Venture Capitalist (Recruit Rockstars 443)

If you’re like most business leaders, you spend plenty of time designing your company’s business model.

Mike Maples warns that you need to spend as much time designing your team, based on your company’s stage & strategy.

He should know.

Mike is Co-Founder & Partner at Floodgate, one of the original early-stage venture capital firms (i.e. writing the first $1M check) he formed 15 years ago.

Mike’s been named to the Forbes Midas List 8 times in the last decade, and for good reason..

He was an early investor in the companies you love: Twitter, Lyft, Bazaarvoice, Storable, TaskRabbit, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Chegg, Demandforce, Smule, Outreach, Okta, Weebly (acquired by Square)

Better still, he’s built companies on both sides of the table, starting as an executive at back-to-back startup IPOs: Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent)

He’s one of the most insightful investors I’ve met. Which is why I’m hooked on his Starting Greatness Podcast. On it, he talks about teams & hiring

Says Mike: “To build your bench, you must spend 25% of your time on recruiting, no matter what.”

Something tells me if Mike wasn’t a legendary VC investor, he’d make a remarkable recruiter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike shares how to design the right team for your business model & current stage.