How to Use Stress as an Entrepreneur (feat. Mike Maples Jr.)

Most great startups have some type of a creative insight or earned secret, and then you have to find some way to translate that earned secret into a product that people will use and that has a good business model where you can get attractive customers. And so the way I like to think about it is you want to get out of a mode of we're all in a room and it's like, whose opinion is right? Instead, what I like to do is say, okay, let's write down on the whiteboard what we think the truth is.

Hi, my name is Stuart Alsop, and this is my podcast, Crazy Wisdom, where I interview creative people about how they work with and manage the stress that is inherent in creative work. What I've realized over the past 10 years of my research is that anybody who is creating something of value that is significantly different from what has come before is considered crazy. Most of us have a fear, an ingrained fear of going crazy. So what I'm saying is grab onto that fear, realize that it's there, and just go with it. Because the problems we're going to be facing over the next 20 years require crazy people in order to solve them. So welcome to the Crazy Wisdom podcast. My guest here is Mike Maples. Can you tell my audience a little bit more about what you do and your connection to stress?

Yeah. So I used to be a startup founder and then I decided to start a venture capital firm. And so now Floodgate, which is the firm I helped start, invests either too early or way too early in startups. And so, for example, we invested in Twitter. When they couldn't decide what to call it, it was either voicemail 2.0 or twttr. We invested in Twitch when it was Justin TV. We invested in Lyft when it was Zimride. We invested in Okta when it was Sasher. And so I bet the only thing that happens consistently is these companies we invest in, change a lot, and have to navigate the uncertainty of finding product, market fit and finding a business. And so we like to think of ourselves as more co conspirators than investors because we're jumping into the fray before there's a parade to jump in front of.