#191 with Mike Maples - 4 Big Trends and $0 to $1 Billion Startup Idea Frameworks

Yeah, I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. All right. Uh, yeah, Sean, this—

I'm—

I, I was playing this Pomp podcast. Pretty good. Um, how'd you feel?

Um, it was good. It was like we showed up, no, no context. Like, what are we going to talk about? Do I need to— do I need to talk about Bitcoin? Do I need to have something smart to say about Bitcoin? Because I kind of just, you know, I believe, I buy, I hold, right? I'm like a monkey in this space. I'm not like, you know, one of these experts. But, um,, but we talked about solo, being a solo capitalist, solopreneur, and, uh, some of the different kind of like things around that. So I thought, I thought it was actually a pretty good conversation. Ben was there and he goes like, I liked this one because I feel like everything you said in this was something new that I had never heard you say before. He's like, whereas, you know, once you listen to somebody for like hundreds of hours, you kind of hear the same greatest hits over and over again. He's like, this felt like new stuff.

Speaking of listening to us for hundreds of hours or listening to you, at least we had a good episode. We just, um, interviewed this guy named Mike Maples. Mike was pretty cool. So Mike is a little under the radar, but he started this thing called Floodgate, which is a really big venture capital firm, but really fascinating guy. What all have they done?

They've done Lyft, Twitch, Twitter, Cruise, Okta, which is like a giant enterprise company that's public. So yeah, a bunch of big winners that he was an investor in pretty early.

Considered one of the best venture capital firms there is. So real insightful guy. He kind of had a hint of biology a little bit. Uh, I mean, he was like real high IQ. I've been using the word high functioning. Um, he's like a real high functioning guy.

He was a high functioning Southerner, right? He, he had this disarming way of talking cuz he's got this, you know, kind of like, I don't know, it was a Southern or Midwestern accent.

Yeah.

And, uh, you know, very, very relatable, likable guy. But then the things he was saying, each one was like a, you know, like sort of a bullet into, you know, of, of, of an idea, of an insight. And he definitely had like a few refined ideas of where he thinks the puck is going. And I appreciate that. I like that he gave us basically these 4 waves. He's like, you know, I believe these 4 inflections are happening right now and that's going to create a bunch of opportunity. And that's what I look for is like, how is the world changing? And then what's, what's going to be new because of these inflection points?

I loved it.

I love the way he had some phrases for things. I thought at the beginning, uh, he was like a little bit too intellectual for me. I was like, okay, wait, where do I go with this? But, um, it was interesting, but I didn't know how to attach it to like concrete idea. And then I thought about, you know, that was maybe the first 25%. And then the next 75%, I thought were fantastic where, yeah, came down to earth. And also he has these— is this kind of amazing way of talking. I'm kind of jealous.

Did you— you are like that.

I know, but I— because I— because I try to be like that. When I see somebody who's really good at it, I'm like, oh shit, you're good at this thing. Most people don't even care about this thing. He had these little phrases, coined terms for either himself or his fund or his philosophy or his mental models. And he'd be like, you know, startup is like a jazz band, not a marching band.

And then he would explain the analogy and then he'd be like, he was like, I want people to choose, not compare, which is hard to understand. But once he explains it, then it's like, oh, that's actually a wonderful mental framework.

It's like that Kanye song where it's like, what does it mean? It's like, I don't know what it means, but it sounds provocative. And that's how I felt with a lot of his things was like, I was immediately interested. I leaned in when he would say one of those phrases, even though my brain hadn't figured out exactly what it means yet. And then he would explain it. So anyways, I thought it was really good and super nice dude. I really thought he was so humble and very likable. So I don't know, great episode. I liked him a lot.

I agree. And he offered to come back. I couldn't tell if, like, when guys are being nice, I'm like, well, if you have time, let's just keep going. I couldn't tell if he was being kind. We'll have to have him back on. Uh, he was awesome, right?

Uh, how did you feel about, uh, when you hit him up for some intros there?

Was that smooth?

Uh, I thought it was pretty smooth. Yeah, you gave him the opportunity to be a hero, and if not, it was totally okay.

Yeah, I asked him— I'm gonna start asking every guest that. The, the question I'm gonna start asking is, uh, who do you think would be an awesome guest? Like, who would be good for those podcasts? And then, uh What do you think is the best way to get in touch with them?

Right. And then they have the opportunity to be like, yeah, just reach out. He's a nice guy. Or yeah, let me just shoot him a note right now. I'll tell him I'll interview you guys.

Right. I thought that was a great angle.

I know I wanted to call it out because people listening, they get this sort of behind the scenes of— as I heard you say it, I was like, oh, smooth, smooth guy Sam going for the intro.

Well, we didn't get the kill on this time. But, uh, we got, I feel as though we've built enough rapport with him. I can, I'll email Mike and maybe he'll help hook it up, but yeah, he did a good job. There we go. So Mike, do you, um, I was connected to you because my friend, my good friend Noah Kagan was like, you gotta holler at this guy. He's pretty interesting. And I had known about you as well because Tim Ferriss, um, lived near me and was a friend of mine. And he told me that he's like, there's like 2 people or 3 people who's advice I listen to when it comes to investing. One is Naval, the founder of AngelList. Two is Scott Belsky, who started Behance and is now probably going to be the CEO of Adobe. And three was you. And, and I was like, that's kind of interesting. You know, I, I have not really heard of Mike too much. You know, you're kind of, you kind of, you kind of keep a, a low profile. And I looked it up, and so you started Floodgate, which eventually You guys have invested in like Twitter, uh, Twitch, Lyft, all types of amazing stuff. But we, so we have this podcast, Sean, and it's pretty popular. Um, you know, millions of people listen and all we do is just brainstorm interesting ideas. And so we thought, you know, we got to get you on to come and talk about some stuff. And so here we are.

Let's give it a shot. Why not? Thanks for having me.

And by the way, I've listened to your podcast, uh, a bunch of times. I remember the episode with the, with Kevin Systrom from Instagram is one of my favorite ones. So, uh, I forget what's the exact name. Is it Starting Greatness or Staring Starting Greatness. Yeah, Starting Greatness.

And it's, it's kind of a labor of love, you know. I, uh, some of the people that work at Floodgate, occasionally we'd have some hallway conversation or in a meeting, they're like, dude, I wish we could have recorded that, right? And so, so in many ways, the, the guests not only help with the, the content, but, but we're trying to help, help the— some of the key ideas of Starting Greatness come alive through the voices of the guests. Because I think there are some counterintuitive lessons of starting a great startup that are not obvious to people.

Right. And you have a good voice. And then B, your intros are great on the pod. It always has like— I don't know how much time you spend on that, but the intros are great compared to us. We put— we're sort of famous for— we barely do an intro. Like, you'll be 10 minutes in and be like, who the hell is this guest? And then, you know, sometimes at the end we do the sort of Irish goodbye where we're like, Okay, that's it. We just sort of like, we end it, we go about our day. And so people have like started making fun of us, making shirts about the Irish goodbye because they're like, dude, I also hate saying goodbyes. It's, it's, you know, the hate, the unwind of a conversation. I like how you guys just leave. And so that's, that's kind of our thing. But what we want, I guess we're gonna start with, we could talk about kind of like all the great stuff you've invested in. But I guess I'm more curious about What's got you excited now? What spaces, what trends are you seeing where you're like, huh, I don't fully know what's there, but there's enough there for me to be interested?

For that cloud office one, what products are you looking at that excite you?

What— so Sean and I are similar or almost the same age. We are the same age. We, um, like when we started work, I mean, we used Google Docs right away, but you're a little bit older than us. And like, that was, that was, you probably didn't— I mean, that was kind of, kind of interesting to you, right? When that, when that first came around. So when you say like what needs to be in the cloud, in my head, I'm like, wait, are you kidding me? Isn't everything already like that? What specifically are you referring to?

For example, there's startups that are doing like virtual office. So they're like, great, everybody's remote. You have all these advantages of remote. What do you miss out on? You miss out on being able to socialize and get to know each other and build trust outside of the water cooler, the conversations that used to happen in the break room. So there's these crazy startups that are saying basically like, like Online Town and stuff like that, that are like, here's a virtual office. You can literally walk around, you can bump into people. I don't know if any of these work, right, but they're like taking stabs at trying to move the like physical office into the cloud too, Sam. So it's not just Docs are in the cloud, but hanging out is in the cloud, right? Bumping into coworkers in the hallways in the cloud.

Yeah, and the problem with most cloud offerings today is that they're basically re-hosted office culture, right? So like Zoom— Zoom is a meeting, but it's a meeting online. It's not like it's asynchronous in any way. It's not You're just rehosting the meeting rather than redefining how work happens. Now, with Zoom, you can take advantage of geography arbitrage, I suppose, so that is a good thing, but you're not able to take advantage of time and talent arbitrage as easily. But like, what I believe ends up happening at the limit is, in office culture, everybody has a job description. And what I think in cloud culture, you know, people have already talked about this, but this idea of, Jobs to be Done theory. And so, like, when you think about it, all of us don't just have one job. All of us do a whole bunch of jobs. Like, if you take even a very simple example, let's say that I work at a flower shop. I might type things into the computer to manage customer records. I might take reservations and orders. I might, some parts of the day, arrange the flowers. Well, when you really think about it, the principle of comparative advantage would suggest that any parts of that, any of those jobs to be done that could be done asynchronously or in the cloud, you should try to do that if you can. Because then you could take advantage of labor arbitrage, time arbitrage, and geography arbitrage. And then if I'm a great flower arranger, that's what I should be spending my time on, is the thing that I'm really good at. And so, what I think cloud culture lets people do at the limit is broadcast their comparative advantage to the world. And, uh, get paid by the network for giving the network what it wants. So I think that it'll— you know, the reason I call it cloud culture as well is, who says everybody has to work at a company, right? Like, people said that robots are going to eat the jobs, but I think that's precisely the opposite of what's true. I think that software is going to reduce the need for people to think they need to work at companies, because it's gonna— all the things I would have had to possess, uh, to, to have a job. I'm not going to need those things anymore, uh, by working at a company. I'm going to be able to have all those things in software on my own. And so I think more and more people are going to— people are going to realize that really there, there is an aggregate of jobs that people do, and all of them could be thought of as like almost like a derivative that can be assembled in different ways and then move to the cloud or you know, let you specialize. And I think that that'll over time change the fundamental culture of how teams work.

And tell me if I'm misunderstanding this, but I think one thing that you just said in there is that this idea that one person belongs to one firm is potentially now an outdated and, you know, suboptimal idea. That instead, you said like a user basically contributes to the network and gets paid for that contribution to the network. And so one person might belong to multiple firms and, you know, firm might change So what does that look like? You're the time traveler. Yes. Let's say we fast forward 10 years. Smart guy like me. How does my— like today, you know, my company got acquired by Twitch. I got a day job at Twitch. You know, great. That's, that's, you know, something I do.

And I know before COVID thanks for your efforts there, by the way. I mean, we, we monetize that a little while ago, but thanks for your efforts.

Of course. Anything I can do for you.

By the way, a VC saying we monetize that is a wonder. That's a really cool flex.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal that one.

Are there examples of startups now that are executing this?

Damn, it's a big idea.

I hope that wasn't— that may be a little bit out there, but, uh, that's kind of—

it's such a big idea that it's hard to— how can I make this more practical for myself and the listeners of someone interested in this field?

So how do you do that? So let's say, let's take you for example. So let's say you, you look at the world this way as it's a giant network and, um, and you're trying to have your comparative, competitive, comparative advantage. So what's your comparative advantage?

Yeah, I would say that my job is to be the very best partner for a super ambitious founder in the zero to one phase. So, right, like if you look at my podcast, people say, hey, why don't you have this guest? Why don't you have that guest? But Starting Greatness is all about Zero to One, awesome startup, super ambitious. What was it like before they succeeded? And there's power, there's addition and subtraction. You know, like sometimes by saying what you're not for, but like niching down, you're very powerful to the people who care about your niche because people say, where have you been all my life? And so what you're trying to do is find that set of like-minded co-conspirators for the niche that you've really chosen to be great at and, and not get preoccupied with the fact that you can't do it all, right? You're, you're way better off understanding what you can just stick the landing at and, and, and, and develop your talents so you can do it even better and better through time.

And today Floodgate is more like a traditional firm, right? It's like a company, kind of like, let's say, current world slash old world, right? You have a, you have a brand, you have multiple employees you have a central fund, you have your LP base, it's sort of static, and then you're investing in a specific, let's say, set or criteria of companies. Whereas the way you're describing things, it sort of feels like— correct me if I'm wrong— it sort of sounded like in the future, what you 20 years from now, what you might have done instead of set up Floodgate is you would have set up, I don't know, a one-person investing fund yourself, or like a DAO or something like that, basically a trust. That's going to invest in a whole bunch of things on the network. And, um, and you wouldn't need the structure of, of a fund with employees and with all these different things. So would you, if you didn't have this already set up and you were setting it up for the next 20 years, would you have set up your investing differently than you did with a kind of traditional VC fund?

You, um, you— I believe it's your partner I looked up who the top venture capitalists were. I think it was your partner. What's your, what's her name?

Uh, Anne Miraco.

Yeah. Yes. Anne is, uh, I looked at like CB Insights 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017. I think she was in the top 10, sometimes number 2 or 3 in many, many, many of the years. Um, consistently you just showed me a sign or a thing of dollar bills with Steve Blank, you know, who's like, Godfather of Silicon Valley saying everything Mike does turns into money. You, uh, I wish— what, what makes you guys great? Uh, what makes you able to spot these interesting opportunities?

And what's one or two of those mental models that we wouldn't expect, right? Like, uh, you know, I might expect somebody to say, you know, we wanna be in a, uh, a big market with customers who really love your product. It's like, okay, yeah, great. You know, um, we wanna be growing, you know, extremely fast exponential growth. Well, yeah, it's obvious at that point. I also, Enjoy Checkmate. So, what's a mental model that's not so obvious where 100 people in a room would nod their heads and immediately say, "Yeah, I already do that. I already think that way when it comes to investing for me." Yeah.

Right. Was it, was it a stellar name? Yeah.

Cute brand. How do you, um, so like you're all, you're what we just discussed was far on one end. Do you ever look at the other side or, or for your job, do you only care about one side? And maybe you just like the, for shooting the shit or talking to your friends who want to get wealthy, do you say like, yeah, but this side's actually kind of interesting too.

Yeah.

It may just fix on your scooter.

Right. And so like, I probably don't deserve too much credit when it does escape, but I probably don't deserve too much of the blame when it doesn't.

Right.

I, I'm just like, just be clear about what I'm selling here. And, and people say, well, you know, it's not realistic that, um, that everybody should build, uh, one of the $20 billion plus exit startups of the year. And I'm like, And you're, you're correct about that. Like, I'm not saying that my advice or my approach is mainstream or even normal. In fact, I would say it's hyper not normal. But like, but in that area, in that area of I sell rocket fuel to people who want to blast their rockets into outer space and get escape velocity, I try to be the very best, period. And so like, that's, that's what I'm in it for. So a lot of your listeners might be like, oh, that's interesting, and it kind of intellectually interesting, but I'm not one of those, but that's okay. There's lots of ways to get rich in this world. And there's lots of ways to succeed in business. Every— comes back to everybody should know what's my comparative advantage and not be preoccupied by all the things you can't be the best at.

So you're not even close to the guy who sees like, oh wow, there's a ton of really poorly run laundry stores or laundry mats. We should buy all of them and put a backend software. I mean, that doesn't even kind of closely, or that doesn't even get you excited.

Well, and not only that, like if somebody said, hey, can you give me some advice on how to grow this? I would say, you should not listen to me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know how to do laundromats at scale. Like it's not even a question of whether I'm interested. It's a question of whether I'm competent. And I'm not, I'm like, I'm not, and I don't try to be. Let go of the idea that I need to be.

I love your answer, by the way. I have something to say about that too. But I would say you've made me realize that I think one of the things that we're trying to build our comparative advantages is like we get on this podcast twice a week and we shoot the shit, either just me and Sam or bring a great guest like you on. And we talk about everything from— I think one of the most popular episodes was biology, talking about The future startups are cities. And it's like, wait, what? And you know, Balaji will bend your brain with the blockchain. And then the next episode. So he's probably the most listened to. And the second most listened to is this side hustle this entrepreneur has where he's— we break down his business of vending machines. He's got 27 vending machines, is making six figures of profit. And, you know, he got started with very little capital and it doesn't take rocket science or rocket fuel to do it. And our listeners like the breadth of that, of how we can hop from blue collar. We have a segment called the Hillbilly Side Hustle, which is like, you know, just a blue collar kind of like simple thing you can do all the way to, okay, what is, you know, some disruptive idea? You know, how does AI impact the space?

And is it okay if we talk about Balaji for a minute? Because I think he's like amazing. Let's do it. He's crazy.

And so, so like, you know, earlier I mentioned this idea of cloud culture. I think Bology probably has the best handle on this of anybody I talk to. So like, and, and, you know, I've, I've listened to much of what he said, but like what I think happens at the limit is that all of these different cloud cultures are like their own societies. Yep. And so right now the main, main organizing principle of society is the nation state, which is also an economies of scale centric model, right? But if you think about it, what is Bitcoin really? Bitcoin is a society of people who care about sound money, and the protocol is what enables governance. And so, these cloud societies at the limit, I think, look more and more like the future version of countries. What is a country really? It's a bunch of people who decide what their boundaries are, who decide who gets in the club, and they have a constitution where they decide how to separate powers and how to protect the rights of individuals against the mob and the tyrant. That's exactly what Bitcoin does with its protocol.

And just to use some other examples. So Bitcoin is the people who have this cult-like belief, religious belief around sound money. Ethereum is people who believe in programmable money. And then you have WallStreetBets, which is like, hey, let's just middle finger to the large, to the incumbents. So how does David beat Goliath? And we're basically going to screw around with them and make profits while we do it. That's what we're here for. And we will We will assign ourselves names. You know, they call themselves retards and things like that because in their culture that's okay, right? Burning Man is a pop-up culture that happens for a week in the desert where all these people will go behave totally differently than they will the other 51 weeks out of the year. And so there's a whole bunch of these either pop-up cultures, cloud cultures that all have different, different virtues, different admissions criteria and all the different pieces you just described.

Yeah. And it's so interesting because there's historical parallels, right? Like in the, in the Reformation, The Pope used to declare all the answers and then all of a sudden, the printing press comes out and double-entry accounting. And now, Martin Luther can distribute the Bible to lots of people in a permissionless way, ironically. And then not only that, the merchants of Venice can trade with each other without a central authority because they can have double-entry records and keep track of IOUs. And so, to me, the internet and blockchain are just so amazingly parallel to that. And I, and I think society ebbs and flows. It's like when you're too decentralized for too long, it gets chaotic. And so then, then you have innovations that centralize the means of production, but then it gets too centralized. And so what we're seeing now, I believe, is WallStreetBets, perfect example. The people at the edge are saying the network should decide, not the center. And if you read books like Revolt of the Republic and things like that, you see a world where the people at the edge are starting to say about the people at the center, you're illegitimate. Just like people at the edge back in the Reformation started to say that about the, the Pope and some of the things that were happening with, um, exclusionary, you know, sort of insider-only activities.

And so, uh, and in the last 2 years, you know, social media went from, you know, the edge to call it pointing at mainstream media. Mainstream media now is like synonymous with the, with fake news, right? That wasn't even a thing 5 years ago, Right. Mainstream media is now used as a derogatory description of something, which is kind of crazy, right? That's a big change.

And the important thing is, like, I try not to be too judgmental about it, so I don't sit there and say, oh, those mainstream media people are no good. I'm just like, it's inevitable that media is going to decentralize. It's inevitable that money will. It's inevitable that politics will. It's inevitable that a lot of these things will. And it's like arguing for it or against it, it's kind of like arguing against the direction of the wind. It's just, it's fruit. But then back to your listeners, to me what that means writ large is if the 20th century was about being the quote-unquote organization man and following the rules and progressing up the hierarchy, it doesn't exist anymore. Now you have to be, you have to take agency for your own life. And own your comparative advantage and understand that that is your responsibility as a free person in this world. And if you do that, you're going to be incredibly rewarded in the 21st century. But if you wish that it's like the 20th, I got bad news for you. It's not going to be.

Floodgate invested into Refinery29, right? Yeah. Um, for those— we unfortunately are I mean, it is what it is. A lot of our listeners are men, so they don't know Refinery29 is a, is a huge media company geared for women. Refinery29.com. They were pretty big, right? They, uh, were like maybe $200 million or $150 million in revenue, and then they sold or merged or something like that with Vice, right? Yes. Um, and Vice is like a probably a billion dollar a year entity at this point with, with everything they have going on. Do you think that media companies like that, given what you're saying about— I mean, because Vice is at this point, even though they were new, Vice and Refinery29 are probably almost like old school at this point. Do you think that those style of media companies are still going to be great companies given what you've just said?

Well, I think that there's going to be a very rich ecosystem of all types of media companies, but, but to me, the defining new characteristic will be that media is no longer a function of the credential elites telling you what to think. And, uh, that, that was the real problem that we started to get in the media, in my opinion, is that, um, you, you had a set of credential elites running these media companies, of which there weren't very many. And, um, these institutions are all inherited now rather than founded. And so the people running these institutions didn't really understand what made them great in the old days And so they, they started to get worse over time in their effectiveness and legitimacy. And so to me, the real question about media is not so much is there one way it's going to happen versus not. I think that the winners will be those that, um, niche down, have a comparative advantage in the type of content that they cover, and attract, uh, the attention of the people who care about that type of content. And, and the credentials won't define it because, um, the, the old media companies had credentialed elites running them, but they also had a monopoly on distribution with the newspaper and how they, how they got print magazines out and things like that. So I think that all of that's going to change.

Is there any media companies or, um, opportunities that you're looking at and you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting for us?

I would, I would say that my colleague Anne Miraco is probably smarter about that than I am. You know, and it's funny, even within Floodgate, I tend to stick to my areas that I'm excited about. And so there's a lot of exciting things that I'll miss, probably.

I'm gonna ask you a question. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you a question that might be hard to answer, because it's one of those things like, oh, you know, how are you, you? But you've said a couple things that caught my attention. You know, you have these nice phrases. One is, I didn't realize that— I see this on your bio here. I didn't realize you coined the term Thunder Lizards. I've heard many investors talk about Thunder Lizards as something they want to invest in, which is like sort of like, you know, the Godzilla-type companies that emerge every decade or so. And like, that's what you really chase because those are where all the returns are and those are what change the world. But you also said the kind of the rock— I'm a rocket fuel salesman. Yeah, you are catchier than your average VC. You are more— I don't know, you have a little sort of gift there of coining these little mind viruses, these little phrases that stick with people rather than just saying a bunch of jargon. Is that a skill you learned consciously, or is that just, you know, growing up, your parents talk like that? Where did that come from?

I don't know, but I guess the way I look at things in this world is you want to force a choice and not a comparison. And so like, what do I mean by that?

Like, by the way, you just did it again.

You did it again. Yeah, exactly.

Right. And so, so like, like if I say, hey, we're investing in particularly disruptive types of companies, that's not the same as saying Thunder Lizards. Right. And so why is it so important? Well, if you're trying to create a breakthrough, by definition, it breaks free from the present. So by definition, it can't be compared to something in the present. Because if it's comparable to what's in the present, it's too incremental, it's too conventional. And so like when I say force a choice and not a comparison, I say to founders, if let's say everybody's selling banana, you can't say I'm a 5x better banana. You instead, you should come out and say, I'm an apple. And not everybody's gonna want your apple, but 100% of the people who prefer apples are gonna want what you have. And like, forget the guy who wants the best banana, there's 1,000 of those people, You need to waste not an erg of energy on them. You need to spend your time on the people who potentially value your advantage and start a movement around that. You know, earlier we talked about markets. Companies have markets that could be segmented, sub-segmented, and classified. Startups don't. Startups, they create movements. They create— they have a secret about the future. They get early believers who co-conspire with them to create a— co-create a different future. And the market emerges as a consequence of the movement succeeding. But in the early days, we just have to get people moving. We have to get people moving to somewhere different, not better. And so as a result, we must force a choice and not a comparison. And I, as a seed investor, I have to do the same thing because there's 2,000 seed funds now. And so it was innovative when Ann and I helped invent seed investing in 2006, but like now there's 2,000 firms. And so we have to come up with some way for people to say, okay, I can't reconcile the choice of working with Floodgate versus Brand X.

Um, and I think Sean and Sam writing, writing checks with— writing checks on the spot, that's how we differentiate.

Well, I don't know, but I think there's a lot to be— it relates to niching down. I think a lot of people would benefit from the idea of how can I force a choice and not a comparison. It takes more courage and it forces you to say no to more than you say yes to. But if you, if you do it the right way, the stuff you say yes to, I like to say it's less but better is the way to think about it.

You've, uh, you've had some amazing people on your podcast. You've invested in a ton of amazing companies, and I bet you know just about everyone in this world. Of all these people that you've invested in or, or did business with, if you guys were put on a, on a stranded island, who do you think would come out on top? Who's the most formidable person that you've, uh, you've you've worked with?

Oh, there, there have been so many great people. Um, I think a lot of it would be a function of just, uh, who had the right idea at the right time. You know, so much of this is just— I, I call it a founder-future fit. It's just like, you know, like when, when Andreessen did Mozilla, it was just— he was the perfect person in the world at the perfect time to do that idea. And so, you know, it's not just how formidable is the person, but it's also just Was the timing right and were they just the right person at the right time?

But I'm obsessed with stories and I love interesting personality types. Is there anyone that fits that bill of being incredibly formidable, like to the point of like, you think, how can you be more like that person? Or I wish everyone thought a little bit more like this person.

Yeah, so I try to learn from everybody, but I never try to imitate or be like somebody else because then that defeats the purpose. Now I'm comparing myself to somebody else.. And so I never do that. I don't believe that people should compare themselves with anybody. I think they should learn from people, but I don't think they should compare themselves to others. And I don't think they should have heroes.

I think that, yeah, you mentioned a couple of people that you've learned from, you know, Balaji being one, you know, Tim Ferriss said he learned from you. Who are some other names? You know, if people listen to this and they're like, you know, or me, right? I've really enjoyed hearing you talk during this hour. I think you got a bunch of smart ideas. I want to know, What's he eating? Basically, what's your information diet? What are some of your favorite people to follow and learn from that you're getting a bunch of interesting information that's not just like the rest?

Yeah. Well, I like the Foreign Street blog a lot with Shane Parrish. And by the way, just because I don't invest like Buffett and Munger doesn't mean I don't study them like crazy, right? Because I think that when I read how they look at the world, I'll understand what's different about how they look at the world, but I'll also connect dots that will make the difference of my world more clear. Um, I, I read a ton. I probably read about 1 or 2 books a week just in general. Um, what are some of the ones that I've read recently that I liked? One I like a lot is called The Courage to Be Disliked, uh, by a couple of Japanese authors. I think it's, it's amazing. And so then I went down this rabbit hole of the psychiatrist Alfred Adler, who, who kind of came of age at the same time as Freud and Jung but, uh, wasn't as famous. But I think he's— I think that Alfred Adler's ideas about individual agency are perfectly timed for the 21st century. Uh, so I've been liking, uh, everything that I can get my hands on about him. Um, and it's, and it's weird because although I read a lot of books, there's, there's always a subset that I come back to over and over again where I try to take notes, and because I try to, I try to make sure I really understand it so that I could explain it to somebody else in a really clear way. Uh, so I, so I like The Courage to Be Disliked quite a bit. I've been reading a lot of stuff on Stoicism lately, uh, which I find to be very misunderstood.

Um, but you know, what's the misunderstanding?

I think that most people think of Stoics as, uh, you know, uh emotionless, uh, turn the other cheek when things go bad. And I actually find that when you read about the Stoics and their actual philosophies in this world, they're actually quite optimistic and quite inspiring. And I find that, uh, it's helpful for me to, um, internalize. So like, things like some of the lessons of Stoicism and some of the lessons of Alfred Adler, I'll find myself reading those books over and over again and trying to make the list of things to learn and ask myself every day, am I exercising those muscles? And then there will be other things where I'm like, a friend of mine will say, this is a really good book. I'm like, I should just read that. Right. That's just fun.

It's great. All right, we're coming up on the hour, so we can wrap it. Mike, thanks for joining. This is great. Where do people find you if they want to get more? So obviously the podcast, so Starting Greatness. Where else should they follow to get more?

Yeah, I'm on Twitter @m2jr. Uh, let's see where— that's probably the best place. Yeah, or floodgate.com.

You're, you're a tweeting machine. I've been following you since, uh, I talked to him years ago about you.

Okay. Yeah. And, and if you guys want to cover any other topics, happy to. I know that we kind of bounced around, so, uh, I want the American Next.

I feel like that would have been an interesting one that I think we should— we, we— if you're up for it, we could do a round 2 around American— I think there's a bunch that's there that, that people aren't talking a ton about.

Yeah, in all these themes, right? Like, I think that the idea also of, uh, you know, blockchains and sort of thinking about, um, the, the future of money and how we're going to a currency governed by commons rather than fiat government is interesting. I think that, you know, the evolution of— you know, I like to say that computing, uh, phases— you had mainframes and you had PCs and you had internet and they always start with an enabling technology and they commoditize the prior. So mainframes, computers were expensive, and then PCs, computers were basically free. Uh, proprietary software becomes valuable. Okay, next thing, the internet, software becomes open source, amassing lots of proprietary data becomes valuable. And so one way I look at blockchains are they're the next wave of computing. And that they're going to probably democratize data and control, uh, of things back to networks. And then what becomes the valuable thing? My, my instinct is it's about governance. And so there's, there's like a lot of conversation we could have about that that might be interesting. And then totally agree, uh, America Next, all the stuff that I think is going to have to happen for the military to be more agile and, uh, for us to kind of upgrade our thinking about stuff.

You know, when you're talking, I'm like, this is what I could be like if I could just focus on 3 things that I really believed in and I just stopped thinking about other shit for like 2 years. I could have this level of clarity and insight. And you're making me want to focus, which Sam and many others in my life have ever— have tried to get me to focus before. And this may be the most effective way.

Do you, um, who, who should we invite next onto this podcast? Who do you think is some of the— some, some of the— are some of the best storytellers and prolific idea folks? You had Reid Hoffman. We're trying to get in touch with him. Is there anyone else that you think is— is we should invite?

Reid Hoffman, Naval Ravikant, um, you know, Chris Sacca is always a good storyteller. Um, I can think about that. You know, the Instagrammers are fun. Uh, Andy Radcliffe, probably not as famous as some, some of your guests and stuff, but boy is he a clear thinker. Uh, a great communicator.

What's the best way to get in touch with Reed? Just a cold email, you think?

Probably. Uh, let's see. Um, um, or you just say that I've mentioned you guys and that it was a good show and that I enjoyed it.

The people that you just mentioned, I'll email the people you just mentioned and I'll say Mike said you're the— Mike said you're the guy.

Yeah, I'll just tell you, you know, I haven't seen as much of Chris Sacca lately, so I don't know if that would be as effective with him. But, uh, but I think that, uh, some of the other guys would, would, uh, would recognize me pretty well.

I showed up for Chris one morning. He texted and he said, hey, I gotta film a Shark Tank intro. We need some bodies in the background, uh, to— for my, my intro. And I, I left my job, I went to where he was at, 9 in the morning, and I filmed a, uh— I was a body double. I was, I was an extra in the background for his Shark Tank intro. So I'll pull that favor card and be like, hey Chris, now's the time to pay it back.

Yeah, I think if you haven't had Mark Cuban, I think he's really good. Uh, um, and, and by the way, on this, so it's funny because you guys are using Zencastr, um, so does Shane Harris. So I was on his, uh, sorry, Shane Parrish. And on his, um, after he listened to the, to the talk, he's like, there's so many upfront questions I wish I'd asked you 'Can we do this again?' And so I was like, 'Sure.' So we ended up having a lot of content that he kind of cut down. But like, if you find yourself in that position here, let me know. I'm happy to help you make it, you know, less but better, right? So if we can, you know, if we're gonna ship a product, it might as well be fucking awesome, right? So I love you.

Where are you from?

I was born in Oklahoma but moved all around. Me too. My dad was an IBMer. Yeah. And then worked at Microsoft.

Yeah, I feel like, um, how old are you?

Uh, early 53.

Yeah, so you're— I'm, I'm 31, so you would have had to have me when you were quite young. But, uh, I feel like you could, you could, you— I could— you could be my uncle, I think.

That's funny, that's what the founders call me. Their nickname for me is the Crazy Uncle.

So, uh, I think we kind of look the same. I could tell you, I thought you would have been from the Midwest or maybe the South. I'm from Missouri.

Oh nice, yep, show me state.

Yeah, and my cousins live in Oklahoma, in Owens, Oklahoma, where they buck bulls. I have a feeling you and I, we could be distant cousins and we don't even know it.

Yep, yeah, you never know. Coming from Missouri and Oklahoma, you never know.

Yeah, well, I appreciate this, man. This is awesome. Sean, you got anything to say?

No, my camera died. I'm at the overheating mark, but Mike, this is great. Thank you for coming on. I, I enjoyed that. That was good.

And you're in Austin now?

I live in Marin County, so I'm in Northern California.

Oh, I thought you lived in Austin for some reason.

No, I helped Tim though find his place. So when he decided to move, I, you know, I used to live in Austin about up until about 15 years ago, and my family's from there, all my relatives and stuff. And so, you know, you did the opposite of what everyone else did. It seems so. And everybody keeps asking me, when are we going to move back to Austin? I, you know, I don't know. I'm pretty happy with where we live, but You know, it's pretty crazy times, so you never know. We'll see.

Well, thanks for being here. We'll talk soon.