“In the Studio” welcomes a co-founder of a company which went public, a native Texan who studied engineering in Silicon Valley and business on the east coast, and who, upon returning to the Valley to begin investing, encountered a different path than he originally anticipated.
By now, everyone in the Valley knows or knows of Mike Maples, a co-founder of FLOODGATE. What they may not know, however, is how difficult it was, despite his success with Motive, the company he co-founded while in college and went public, to return to the Valley and embark on the next career he imagined for himself. Maples wanted to be a VC, so he was offered EIR positions at two firms, but never full-time employment. During this time, he also noticed a gap in the investment market between individual angel investors deploying their own money and larger, institutional venture capital firms, who wanted to write bigger checks. This experience gave Maples the idea for his investment firm, which is now FLOODGATE, to fill in the gap with a smaller institutional fund. Maples’ insights, company intuition, early-stage dealmaking abilities now speaks for itself, with early stage investments in companies such as Zimride (Lyft), Wanelo, Ayasdi, Weebly, Reputation.com, Playdom, Okta, ngmoco, Modcloth, IFTTT, digg, Chegg, BranchOut, Bazaarvoice, and many others. And, a little company called Twitter.
To read the full, original article click on this link: “In The Studio,” FLOODGATE’S Mike Maples Maintains An Outsider Mindset Despite His Valley Successes | TechCrunch
