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 new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.   Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 Floodgate examines three lessons learned from the recent viral breakout of the educational technology company Mentava, and why true Pattern Breakers don’t depend on the media or outside voices to shape their narrative. Instead, they speak for themselves, directly and boldly, telling the world their story in their own words. Check out the new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.   Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.   Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 massive open online courses (MOOCs). After building the company into a global phenomenon she left Coursera in 2016 to become chief computing officer at Calico, and in 2018 she founded insitro, a drug discovery startup. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate talks with Koller about the origins of Coursera and the challenges the company faced in its early days, as well as its lasting impact for learners worldwide. She also discusses what she sees in the future for insitro and why she believes so strongly in machine learning-driven drug discovery and development.

Check out the new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.  

Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.  

Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 Breakers draws from decades of experience in entrepreneurship and venture capital from its co-authors to offer a radical set of new ideas for how entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate leaders can dominate the future.

Check out the new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.  

Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.  

Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

What are the traits of a great founder, or a great founding team? People tend to answer with general traits like tenacity, adaptability, or attention to users. But Founder-Future Fit can play an equally vital role and it varies from startup to startup.  In this Breakthrough Lesson, Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate describes the concept of Founder-Future Fit. He explains how it propelled Justin Kan's success with Justintv and Twitch; and how its absence made his later journey with Atrium much tougher.

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 the ability to convince people to follow his lead. On this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Kan about the  runaway success of Twitch, but also his fear of scarcity, chasing extrinsic goals, and what he learned from his setbacks at Atrium, where he served as founding CEO.

Check out the new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.  

Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.

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 of Floodgate discusses the success of superbuilder Kyle Vogt and how his ingenuity saved Justin.tv, as well as how superbuilders help a startup tackle adversity and attract greatness to the team.

Check out the new Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.  

Mike's new book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books.