Lessons of Greatness: Refuse Mediocrity

Founders are naturally drawn to the tantalizing potential of their product reaching a vast market, but the route to victory starts with nailing a niche before going for the broader opportunity. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE calls on the lessons of Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek to examine how this is done: Identify a stronghold where you can dominate, deliver a Delta 4 experience, and do everything possible to create unfair advantages in your favor.

When he was a little boy growing up in Sweden, Daniel Ek was obsessed with two things: the binary realm of computers and the artistry of music. As a young adult, he combined his love for both by co-founding Spotify, which became the global standard-bearer for streaming, Spotify now has more than 500 million users per month. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE interviews Daniel Ek to break down the importance of recognizing technology infections, securing the perfect niche to secure early product-market fit, and how creating something radically different changed the music industry while redefining consumer listening habits.

Startup founders dealt with uncertainty, stress and trauma in the wake of the run on Silicon Valley Bank, but the most important lessons from this crisis never showed up in social media. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE calls on the actions of a variety of founders who showed incredible courage and competence to showcase three crucial lessons for founders for how to deal with another potential crisis: Scenario planning, financial agility, and crisis communication.

The recent run on Silicon Valley Bank led to a variety of accusations, recriminations and finger-pointing on social media, but how can FOUNDERS actually learn from the crisis? And what lessons can we learn from the founders who crushed it under tough circumstances? In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr welcomes FLOODGATE co-founder Ann Miura-Ko on the show to discuss these topics. Mike and Ann also speak with SmarterDx CEO Michael Gao about how he handled a wild weekend for his company, and legendary marketing guru Christopher Lochhead stops by to discuss the best strategies for crisis communications.

When we REFUSE to accept mediocrity, we can start building greatness. But how can you avoid the pitfalls of learned helplessness and help your company break through the arbitrary limits that impede progress? In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE calls on the lessons of Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl to examine three tips to help founders develop startups that change the future: Embrace the belief you can make radical change, find a big problem that speaks to your soul, and then get maniacally focused on the details.

More than fifty years after the first Concorde took flight, consumer air travel is actually SLOWER. Blake Scholl and his team at Boom Supersonic are out to reverse this stagnation and change how we think about commercial aviation. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE interviews Scholl to learn more about the history of American aviation, the origins of Boom Supersonic and the challenges it faces now, and how tech founders are exploring unfamiliar spaces with great success.

When a startup product goes to market, the two key muscles it can flex are marketing and sales. In nearly every facet of a startup product, marketing or sales takes the natural lead in getting the product to customers. But startups often pour resources into these two areas in unfocused ways, and the results can be disastrous. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses the work of Silicon Valley legend Mark Leslie and specifically the framework of Leslie’s Compass, a simple but essential set of heuristics designed to bring more clarity and focus to your startup’s strategy.

Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE welcomes back go-to-market expert and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer Mark Leslie for the second of their two-part interview, this time focusing on the role and responsibilities of a CEO and a deep dive into Leslie’s Compass, an essential set of heuristics for every startup founder. Leslie also discusses the value of founders focusing on a five-year plan for their startup, why it’s challenging to make meaningful change inside a large company, and why every founder should understand the relationship between their sales and marketing departments.

When a startup launches a new product, it's tempting to ramp its sales force too quickly. Often, this leads to a crash-and-burn scenario for companies that failed to learn what it took for the *entire organization* to achieve product-market-fit. In this lesson of greatness, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses how Mark Leslie's Sales Learning Curve framework helps startups keep themselves honest about their progress toward product-market fit, rather than falling into the trap of wishful thinking that usually leads to disaster.

During the 1990s, Mark co-founded Veritas Systems, which he piloted from nothing to 6,000 employees and $1.5B in revenue in a decade. Now a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Leslie is one of the foremost experts in go-to-market strategy in Silicon Valley, and in the first of this two-part series with Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE, Leslie discusses what strategies he used to make Veritas a runaway success, and the origins for the Sales Learning Curve.