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Pattern Breakers

Pattern Breakers

Written by: Floodgate
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Host Mike Maples Jr. from venture capital firm Floodgate offers lessons from the rare startup super performers — BEFORE they were successful. Pattern Breakers features interviews with some of Silicon Valley’s most legendary entrepreneurs and thought leaders, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger, business maverick Mark Cuban, and Shopify co-founder Tobi Lütke. Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • James Beshara: How a Dangerous Problem Led to a Magical Solution

    James Beshara: How a Dangerous Problem Led to a Magical Solution
    Apr 27 2026
    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 off the menu due to his medical condition, he began asking what he could use to stay alert throughout the day. Suddenly, the idea for Magic Mind was born. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Beshara about his early days founding the fintech company Tilt and what went wrong, the stress that landed him in the hospital, the origin story behind the mental performance shot company Magic Mind, and why solving your own problem makes you a domain expert likely to find yourself inside a community of people with the same issue. 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!
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    46 mins
  • Immad Akhund: How Mercury Saved The Day For Startups

    Immad Akhund: How Mercury Saved The Day For Startups
    Mar 16 2026

    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. That's what it looks like when a founder who thinks about a problem all the time is ready to seize the moment when it arrives.

    In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund about why  more than 200,000 of the world's most ambitious companies trust Mercury with their money, and why the company’s success was no accident. A prolific angel investor with a history of backing more than 350 startups including Ripple, Airtable, and Substack, Akhund had been living inside the startup ecosystem for years, and knew firsthand all about the challenges founders faced with banking. “In some ways the idea seems obvious to me,” Akhund says. “There’s no reason banking has to be broken.”

    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!
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    40 mins
  • John Zimmer: Pink Mustaches, Rideshare Wars, and the Legacy of Lyft

    John Zimmer: Pink Mustaches, Rideshare Wars, and the Legacy of Lyft
    Feb 9 2026
    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 a logistical impossibility and battling Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick for market supremacy. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Zimmer about a variety of different essential lessons from Lyft’s journey, including his ability to spot anomalies and create a genuine breakthrough. They also discuss the origins of and strategy behind Lyft’s iconic pink mustache logo, how Uber operatives tried to bring Lyft down, and why he’s always taken the answer “no” as an invite for a conversation. 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!
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    42 mins
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