

Pattern Breakers
Floodgate
Host Mike Maples Jr. from venture capital firm Floodgate offers lessons from the rare startup super performers — BEFORE they were successful. Pattern Breakers features interviews with some of Silicon Valley’s most legendary entrepreneurs and thought leaders, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger, business maverick Mark Cuban, and Shopify co-founder Tobi Lütke.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Feb 28, 2022 • 8min
Breakthrough Lessons: The Artistry of Startup Breakthroughs
Too many people mistakenly believe that being a good entrepreneur comes from simply talking to customers and solving their pain. But the most impactful companies are built for aesthetic reasons - think of Twitter, Lyft, Apple, and Medium - and those companies serve as expressions of what their founders thought the world needed. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses the success of Pandora’s visionary founder Tim Westergren, and offers three tips for founders looking to bring a more aesthetically beautiful future to the world.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
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Feb 28, 2022 • 42min
Tim Westergren: How The Band Kept Playing At Pandora
Tim Westergren maxed out 11 credit cards, racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and was rejected 348 times for a second round of funding for his revolutionary idea for a music streaming platform. But like any true artist, Westergren remained committed to his vision of creating an aesthetically more beautiful future with Pandora, and now the company boasts more than 6 million monthly subscribers. Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE interviews Westergren to discuss the company’s humble beginnings, why it took an act of Congress to keep the company alive, and why both men believe the best founders are artists who can sell their vision.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
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Dec 20, 2021 • 8min
Breakthrough Lessons: “BIG D" Design
Lots of people think about design from the perspective of how a product should look and function. But design can be applied to greatness on many more levels than most realize. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses how you can design your opportunity, your team, your market, your category, your culture, and even your own life. "Big D" design is about understanding that you have the chance to be more intentional in more areas that contribute to success than most realize.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
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14 snips
Dec 20, 2021 • 37min
Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig of Applied Intuition: A Startup Designed to Win
Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig both grew up in the backyard of American automotive giant General Motors in Detroit, but didn’t cross paths until their days as product managers at Google. Since then they’ve pooled their affinity for cars and technology as the co-founders of Applied Intuition, a fast-moving startup that has already achieved greatness with their advanced simulation software for autonomous vehicles. Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE interviews Younis and Ludwig to discuss how the company has made its mark so quickly, and the value of being highly intentional about what will drive success from day one.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike. Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.Follow Mike on X!

Nov 15, 2021 • 13min
Breakthrough Lessons: How to Defeat "We're F*cked, It's Over" (WFIO) Moments
Your startup will face multiple WFIO moments on the path to greatness...COUNT ON IT. But that doesn’t mean you should let these moments get inside your head. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses how every startup team MUST be prepared to take the initiative in the crucible of the WFIO moments they will inevitably face. The bright side? You can use these horrible situations as defining moments to show everyone that your startup is destined to defeat the impossible.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
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Nov 15, 2021 • 44min
Ben Horowitz: “The IPO From Hell” and Other REAL Lessons from the Startup Crucible
Startups are romanticized AFTER they win. But it takes extraordinary grit to have what it TAKES to win. Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of Andreessen-Horowitz, is the perfect guest to tell it like it is, as he has for many years in his books "the Hard Thing About Hard Things" and "What You Do Is Who You Are." Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE interviews Ben to discuss the ups and downs of dealing with "the struggle," and why the best startup leaders are often the ones who simply refused to quit.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
Follow Mike on X!

Nov 1, 2021 • 13min
Breakthrough Lessons: The future is DESIGNED, not predicted
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel understands that the task of a revolutionary startup is to manifest a radically different future, and not merely settle for a marginal improvement. But how did he make that future a reality with messenger RNA Therapeutics, and how can you do it with your startup? In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE goes in-depth on the three strategies to designing a future where your startup achieves greatness: Play offense with risk, use the Backcasting method, and connect the future to the present.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
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Nov 1, 2021 • 45min
Stephane Bancel of Moderna: $5B and 10 years on the path to changing humanity
What’s it like to run a startup that has achieved its goal of impacting humanity at a time of desperate need? Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel joins Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE to discuss the power of taking offensive risks to seize unlikely futures with massive upside, sometimes with the result of changing the odds of life itself. For founders seeking greatness, the conversation also teases out many of the enduring lessons of how we can increase the odds of creating massive breakthroughs.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
Follow Mike on X!

Sep 21, 2021 • 10min
Breakthrough Lessons: Apply Game Design to Business Software
Rahul Vohra shows us how game design can be used to make business products far more engaging and contribute to a state of flow. Since future success in business software and services is increasingly driven by product-led growth and bottoms-up adoption driven by end-users, mastering game design is vital for startups seeking greatness. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr talks about the specific and actionable steps you can take to harness the power of game design in your products.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
Follow Mike on X!

42 snips
Sep 21, 2021 • 37min
Rahul Vohra of Superhuman: How to create business products people *enjoy* using
Rahul Vohra of Superhuman has adopted some of the most cutting-edge approaches to making a business product people *want* to use, rather than have to use. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE talks to Rahul about how any startup founder can apply the principles of game design to their products, and why this is becoming increasingly important in a world where users (rather than IT) increasingly decide which products win.
Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for
even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.
Follow Mike on X!