Shaan (@ShaanVP) and Sam (@TheSamParr) talk with seed VC Mike Maples (@m2jr). Mike is a co-founding Partner at Floodgate. He has been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade due to notable investments like Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, and Okta. In this episode he talks about the four big trends he is excited about, the types of companies he likes to invest in, and why a startup isn’t a company. He shares a few of the mental models he uses at Floodgate to evaluate startups and shares the thoughts behind some of his unique turns of phrase.

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Show notes:

* (1:02) – Debrief of the episode

* (6:37) - Intro to Mike Maples

* (9:02) - How Mike thinks about the next big thing

* (11:00) – The 4 inflections Mike is excited about

* (13:51) – Cloud Offices

* (19:33) – A brief history of centralization & decentralization

* (22:48) – Examples of software defined companies

* (26:14) – A practical way to prepare for the future

* (30:23) – How Mike thinks about investing in startups

* (33:07) – Startup investing mental models

* (37:39) – Mike’s take on "1 to n" businesses

* (42:36) – Mike on Balaji

* (47:11) – Mike on media companies 

* (49:49) – Force a choice, not a comparison

* (54:46) – Mike’s information diet

* (57:40) – Contact info & future topics