Pattern Breakers

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 Miro, Slack, LEGO and NASA on product strategy and time management. Knapp also wrote the New York Times bestseller Sprint, and he’s a guest instructor at Harvard Business School. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate dives into the details of Knapp’s new book Click, which helps founders figure out who your customer is, what problem they have, how your idea stands out, and how to test your idea quickly to see if it really works. The book offers 12 important lessons, a step-by-step playbook, and memorable stories from Nike, Microsoft, Google, and Slack, and helps founders to stop guessing and start building something people truly need. 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!

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 businesses stored and collaborated around information was about to change. Two decades later Box is a cornerstone of the cloud era with $1 Billion in revenue, but co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie is as restless as ever. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Levie about how he started Box when he was still in college at USC, why it’s fatal for startups to hire sales reps too slowly, and how he’s personally leading the way as the company looks to reinvent itself in the era of AI. 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!

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 eventually revolutionized how financial data moved through the internet, eventually boasting customers like Robinhood, Coinbase and Venmo. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Perret about the company’s austere early days, convincing the banking industry to change its legacy ways, the concept of lighthouse customers, and why every day your startup lives, you get another chance to find greatness. 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!

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 energy to truly chase their dreams. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Reeves about how Gusto identified pain points for small business founders everywhere, what it took to turn payroll from a grind into a tool that freed entrepreneurs to focus on what truly matters, and what he’s learned as the CEO of a revolutionary $9.5B software company. 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!

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 high-achieving kids reach their true potential. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Hoven about the origins of Mentava, how one very online critic gave the company an unexpected sales boost, and why Hoven has found himself engaged in a much bigger story about the shared and growing frustration with the cult of lower standards in education. 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!

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 companies. Mike discusses the insights he’s gathered from decades of investing, inflection theory, what the latest AI sea change means for the future of business, and ideas from his new national bestselling book, Pattern Breakers.This episode originally aired on the Masters of Scale podcast.  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!

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, along with the connections and knowledge she gained, inspired her to co-found Living Carbon. Her startup offers "supertrees" that grow faster, produce harder wood, and absorb more carbon from the atmosphere. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate talks with Hall about her career path and how her decisions led her to start Living Carbon, where she is driven by the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.  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!