Pattern Breakers Podcast Por Floodgate arte de portada

Pattern Breakers

Pattern Breakers

De: Floodgate
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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. Economía Gestión y Liderazgo Liderazgo
Episodios
  • Immad Akhund: How Mercury Saved The Day For Startups

    Immad Akhund: How Mercury Saved The Day For Startups
    Mar 16 2026

    When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed over 48 hours in March 2023, it marked the third-largest bank failure in United States history and the largest since the 2008 financial crisis. But the fintech company Mercury was willing and ready to save the day for startups in need, landing $2 billion in new deposits in five days. That's what it looks like when a founder who thinks about a problem all the time is ready to seize the moment when it arrives.

    In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund about why  more than 200,000 of the world's most ambitious companies trust Mercury with their money, and why the company’s success was no accident. A prolific angel investor with a history of backing more than 350 startups including Ripple, Airtable, and Substack, Akhund had been living inside the startup ecosystem for years, and knew firsthand all about the challenges founders faced with banking. “In some ways the idea seems obvious to me,” Akhund says. “There’s no reason banking has to be broken.”

    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!
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    40 m
  • John Zimmer: Pink Mustaches, Rideshare Wars, and the Legacy of Lyft

    John Zimmer: Pink Mustaches, Rideshare Wars, and the Legacy of Lyft
    Feb 9 2026
    Lyft co-founder John Zimmer helped spark a movement to revolutionize transportation, but the road was never a smooth one. Zimmer and co-founder Logan Green had to outmaneuver entrenched taxi monopolies and rewrite the rules of urban mobility on the fly, all while scaling a business model that many experts insisted was a logistical impossibility and battling Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick for market supremacy. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Zimmer about a variety of different essential lessons from Lyft’s journey, including his ability to spot anomalies and create a genuine breakthrough. They also discuss the origins of and strategy behind Lyft’s iconic pink mustache logo, how Uber operatives tried to bring Lyft down, and why he’s always taken the answer “no” as an invite for a conversation. 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!
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    42 m
  • Spenser Skates: How Perseverance Paid Off for Amplitude

    Spenser Skates: How Perseverance Paid Off for Amplitude
    Jan 5 2026

     When Amplitude launched in 2012, the analytics market looked crowded, and the company spent more than a year struggling to find any traction. But co-founder and CEO Spenser Skates prioritized truth seeking over narratives. He studied the outcomes of past Y Combinator batches and noticed a simple rule: Most companies died before they even learned enough to make something that people want. All Amplitude had to do was survive.

    In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Skates about that crucial realization and how his company preserved through its first two years on the map, why he’s never been afraid of failure, Amplitude’s surprising early adopters, the value of learning sales skills, and how he tries to raise the bar for the company even higher amid all of its success.

    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!
    Más Menos
    45 m
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What does it mean to live in the future? What is a movement with future impact? So many questions that motivate advanced thinking about what can change our world. Must listen!

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