Investors · new episode 21 Jul 2026
Pattern Breakers
Hosted by Mike Maples, Floodgate
A seed investor on the founders and ideas that break the pattern, and why they work.
Follow on Apple PodcastsThe regulars
Investors named as guests in the most episode titles on Pattern Breakers.
Every episode 114 · page 1 of 4
- 114Max Mullen: How Instacart Solved the Problem of Grocery Delivery21 Jul 2026 · 43 minMax Mullen▶Show page
About this episode
When Max Mullen was a teenager, he used his mother’s credit card to order some candy and soda off the internet from the online company Kozmo.com. Less than an hour later his order arrived, and Mullen was hooked on grocery delivery as a breakthrough idea that could make people's lives easier. But by the time Mullen…
- 113James Beshara: How a Dangerous Problem Led to a Magical Solution27 Apr 2026 · 46 minJames Beshara▶Show page
About this episode
For most of his 20s, James Beshara tried to go big as a startup founder in a hot category where he burned tons of money in hopes of getting big fast. Instead, he ended up with a heart condition and a fire sale. So he decided to radically rethink his approach, and start with a problem that he actually had. With coffee…
- 112Immad Akhund: How Mercury Saved The Day For Startups16 Mar 2026 · 40 minImmad AkhundRipple▶Show page
About this episode
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.…
- 111John Zimmer: Pink Mustaches, Rideshare Wars, and the Legacy of Lyft9 Feb 2026 · 42 minJohn ZimmerTravis KalanickLogan Green▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 110Spenser Skates: How Perseverance Paid Off for Amplitude5 Jan 2026 · 45 minSpenser SkatesY Combinator▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 109Wade Foster: Why Zapier is Built for the AI Revolution18 Nov 2025 · 42 minWade FosterRevolutionBryan Helmig▶Show page
About this episode
When Wade Foster was a kid growing up in Jefferson City, Missouri, there weren’t many models for how to carve out a career in entrepreneurship. But when he and his friend Bryan Helmig developed an easier way to help users connect web-based applications, they ushered in what would eventually become Zapier, a remote…
- 108Howie Liu: Building Airtable to Feel Magical29 Sept 2025 · 46 minHowie Liu▶Show page
About this episode
Spreadsheets were originally designed for finance people. But when Howie Liu and his co-founders started Airtable in 2012, they had a deeper insight that a spreadsheet-database hybrid could be used by anyone for just about anything, including project management, content calendars, recipes, and even travel itineraries.…
- 107Joe Liemandt: The AI-Powered School Rewriting the Future of Education9 Sept 2025 · 43 minJoe Liemandt▶Show page
About this episode
Long before he attended Stanford, founded software giant Trilogy, or became the youngest member of the Forbes 400, Joe Liemandt wrote a high school paper about the potential for a futuristic technology called Artificial Intelligence. Four decades later Liemandt sits in the principal’s chair at Alpha School, an…
- 106Mårten Mickos: Essential Lessons From A Legendary Tech CEO25 Aug 2025 · 41 minGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
Mårten Mickos isn't the kind of CEO who tries to dream up world-changing ideas or invent brand new markets. Perhaps best known for leading MySQL to becoming a $1 billion success story that powered Facebook, Google, and YouTube, Mickos also led teams at Eucalyptus and HackerOne and has consistently shown an ability to…
- 105Eric Schmidt: The Implications of Superintelligence4 Aug 2025 · 41 minGoogleHenry Kissinger▶Show page
About this episode
Best known as the CEO who helped transform Google from a promising startup into one of the best businesses in human history, Eric Schmidt has recently become one of the most important voices in the global conversation about artificial intelligence. He’s co-written two books on the subject including the New York Times…
- 104Pedro Franceschi: Lessons from an Evolving Entrepreneur, from Hacking iPhones to Building Brex30 Jun 2025 · 43 minPedro Franceschi▶Show page
About this episode
At just 13 years of age, Pedro Franceschi was one of the first to jailbreak the iPhone. By the time he was 15 he had co-founded a payments company that would process over a billion in transactions. And by the time he was in his early 20s, helped transform a last minute YC pivot into Brex, one of the most iconic…
- 103Mitchell Hashimoto: How Solving His Own Problem Sparked HashiCorp16 Jun 2025 · 39 minMitchell Hashimoto▶Show page
About this episode
The most successful founders don't usually chase startup ideas. Instead, they're pulled toward problems they can't ignore. Back in 2009, Mitchell Hashimoto set out to fix what frustrated him by hacking nights and weekends, open sourcing the tools he wished had existed for over a year. His quiet persistence and…
- 102Jake Knapp: The Founder’s Guide to Product-Market Fit5 May 2025 · 41 minJake KnappGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
For startups in the zero to one phase, finding product-market fit isn't everything. It’s the only thing. And there are few people in the entrepreneurial world better at solving the product-market fit puzzle than Jake Knapp, who helped build Microsoft Encarta and Gmail, co-founded Google Meet, and has advised teams at…
- 101Amjad Masad: Resolve, Persistence, and the Rise of Replit15 Apr 2025 · 39 minAmjad MasadY Combinator▶Show page
About this episode
Amjad Masad's journey is defined by relentless persistence. Born and raised in Jordan, he borrowed computers to teach himself coding, and then earned money building software for local internet cafes. He applied to Y Combinator again and again, finally gaining acceptance on his fourth try. His constant drive fueled…
- 100Aaron Levie: The Restless Founder Plotting the Future of Cloud Storage and AI31 Mar 2025 · 41 minAaron LevieBill GatesMark Cuban▶Show page
About this episode
When the team behind Box first went looking for funding back in 2005, they tried just about every trick in the book. They sent Bill Gates a fax. They dropped a prospectus off at Paul Allen’s house in Seattle. And they took a shot at convincing Mark Cuban to join two ambitious college kids with a hunch the way…
- 99Guillermo Rauch: The Product Visionary Fueling Vercel and Millions of Developers17 Mar 2025 · 40 minGuillermo Rauch▶Show page
About this episode
Guillermo Rauch didn’t find success by accident. He began working on computers as a kid growing up in Argentina and was hooked immediately, eventually falling in love with programming and open source before moving to Silicon Valley. Since then his blend of technical foresight, audacious ambition and obsessive…
- 98Zach Perret: The Survival Story of a Fintech Giant25 Feb 2025 · 38 minZach PerretWilliam Hockey▶Show page
About this episode
Long before Plaid became a $13.4 billion fintech juggernaut, it was just another struggling startup. Co-founders Zach Perret and William Hockey burned through cash and pivoted from one failed idea to the next, ultimately getting turned away by roughly 100 VCs during seed round funding. But Plaid persevered, and…
- 97Baiju Bhatt: First Robinhood, Next …. Outer Space?28 Jan 2025 · 41 minBaiju Bhatt▶Show page
About this episode
As the co-founder of Robinhood, Baiju Bhatt didn't just help launch a company. He sparked a movement that fundamentally shifted the dynamics of investing, and created a new path for everyday people to participate in the markets. But can the man who changed the way people think about money do the same for energy? In…
- 96Josh Reeves: How Gusto Took The Pain Out Of Payroll16 Dec 2024 · 39 minJosh ReevesEdward KimTomer London▶Show page
About this episode
When Josh Reeves, Tomer London and Edward Kim founded Gusto in 2012, roughly 40 percent of the employers in the United States were still doing their payroll by hand. Thousands of small business owners spent their time reading up on various federal and local tax codes or buried in late-night paperwork, drained of the…
- 95Breakthrough Lesson: RIP To Old-School Marketing7 Oct 2024 · 10 min▶Show page
About this episode
Most startups stick to traditional methods of getting their message out. Pattern Breakers, however, don't follow the old rules of marketing. Instead they ignite a movement where they ultimately rise to the top, uncontested, while others later scramble for the leftovers. In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples Jr. of…
- 94Niels Hoven: Teaching Two Year-Olds to Read Like Second Graders23 Sept 2024 · 35 minNiels Hoven▶Show page
About this episode
The team behind the educational technology company Mentava is a small one, but its product idea is extremely ambitious: An app that teaches two year-olds to read at a second grade level. The idea is the brainchild of founder Niels Hoven, a father of four committed to accelerating K-12 education and helping…
- 93Daphne Koller: Changing Lives With Coursera5 Aug 2024 · 44 minDaphne Koller▶Show page
About this episode
Few startup founders follow a path to success like Daphne Koller, a polymath whose academic career in machine learning, computer vision, and computational biology make her a force far beyond the business arena. Koller left her academic career at Stanford in 2012 to co-found Coursera, the world’s largest platform for…
- 92Pattern Breakers: Which Startups Change the Future?29 Jul 2024 · 37 minReid Hoffman▶Show page
About this episode
On this special episode of Pattern Breakers, host Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate joins LinkedIn founder and legendary investor Reid Hoffman for a conversation on Hoffman’s podcast Masters of Scale, where iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world's most fascinating…
- 91A Sneak Peek at Pattern Breakers9 Jul 2024 · 40 minSteve Blank▶Show page
About this episode
Today is a huge day for Pattern Breakers , the book. Co-written with Peter Zeibelman of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Pattern Breakers has been dubbed “the most important start-up book of the last ten years” by legendary entrepreneur and co-creator of the Lean Startup movement Steve Blank. Pattern…
- 90Maddie Hall: A Different Path to the Future1 Jul 2024 · 40 minMaddie HallSam Altman▶Show page
About this episode
There is no single path to becoming the founder of a pattern-breaking startup. For Maddie Hall, her journey began with a crucial choice: to brainstorm startup ideas or to spend time with people already shaping the future. She chose the latter, following Sam Altman at OpenAI as his Chief of Staff. This experience,…
- 89Breakthrough Lessons: Founder-Future Fit24 Jun 2024 · 12 min▶Show page
About this episode
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 !
- 88Justin Kan: Pattern Breaker Personified10 Jun 2024 · 42 minJustin Kan▶Show page
About this episode
If pattern breaker was a term in the dictionary, you just might find an image of Justin Kan. From his attempts as a teenager to send a camera to outer space, to selling his first company on Ebay, to strapping a camera to his head to play the starring role on Justin.tv, Kan has always been a man with uncommon ideas and…
- 87Breakthrough Lessons: The Value of a Superbuilder3 Jun 2024 · 11 minKyle Vogt▶Show page
About this episode
In the early days of a start-up, the superbuilder can be as important to greatness as the start-up leader, and they’re often not the same person. But what are the traits of a great superbuilder, and why do they play such a crucial role in the zero to one phase of a company? In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples, Jr…
- 86Kyle Vogt: A Problem Solver With A Purpose27 May 2024 · 39 minKyle Vogt▶Show page
About this episode
Kyle Vogt has always been fascinated with designing robots and machines. From his youngest days, he retrofitted his father's car to drive itself along the highways of his home state of Kansas. Later, he dropped out of MIT and became a wildly successful startup founder, playing a crucial role in the development of…
- 85Breakthrough Lessons: Learning to Savor Surprises20 May 2024 · 12 minEmmett Shear▶Show page
About this episode
The ability to notice and savor surprises is a key overlooked skill of the greatest founders. It allows you to narrow in on the types of capabilities that will lead to breakthroughs. In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples, Jr of Floodgate calls on the lessons learned by Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear to discuss why…
Who the show talks about
Firms named in its episodes, and people named in descriptions: talked about, rather than on the show.
