Draper University
12.4K posts
@draper_u
The largest residential founder fellowship in Silicon Valley for pre-seed. Pitch to our fund investing up to $100k at Demo Day.
Excited to publish @WeThe_Builders E15 with Mike Maples (@m2jr), cofounder of @floodgatefund, 8x @Forbes Midas List investor and author of Pattern Breakers. I first found Mike when I came across his podcast with @osmanrashid, (Cofounder of @Chegg) about 6 years ago. I have since admired Mike’s philosophy on startups and investing. Mike is an early investor in category defining companies like @X, @okta, Chegg, @Twitch, @CloverHealth and @AppliedInt to name a few. I hosted a dinner on the topic of technological stagnation about 3 years ago with Mike and a few other investors and founders, this was pre-ChatGPT, before defense or dual-use investing went mainstream and before reindustrialization became a national agenda for the US. We look back at what has changed in the last few years and if we are making progress at a better rate in the world of atoms than before. In one way, Mike has seeded the reindustrialization movement by investing in @2112Power, Cofounder of @HadrianInc (which was the only investment he made in 2021) and key orchestrator of the marquee @reindsummit Conference in Detroit which is leading the way on building a platform for policymakers, startups, capital allocators and manufacturers on bringing back the most critical industries through advanced technology adoption. In this episode, Mike talks about how startups have to build a radically different future and through great storytelling bring their customers, investors and employees to their version of the future which they are already convinced of. I also asked him about the origin stories of investing in and finding Twitter, @digg and @lyft. We also discuss how @floodgatefund differentiated itself in 2015 when they were a decade into seed investing and again in 2025 two decades into seed investing. Floodgate has a concentrated investing strategy and having been around for 20 years, they are unique in the sense that they were not tempted to go raise a mega fund and maintain a fund size of around $150m and do only seed. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours with Mike, I hope y’all enjoy this one. One of my favorite quotes from the episode among gems Mike dropped: Even being different worse is better sometimes than being better at the same (thing). - Mike Maples Jr. Special thanks to @NFX for hosting us for this episode.
Excited to publish @WeThe_Builders E15 with Mike Maples (@m2jr), cofounder of @floodgatefund, 8x @Forbes Midas List investor and author of Pattern Breakers. I first found Mike when I came across his podcast with @osmanrashid, (Cofounder of @Chegg) about 6 years ago. I have since admired Mike’s philosophy on startups and investing. Mike is an early investor in category defining companies like @X, @okta, Chegg, @Twitch, @CloverHealth and @AppliedInt to name a few. I hosted a dinner on the topic of technological stagnation about 3 years ago with Mike and a few other investors and founders, this was pre-ChatGPT, before defense or dual-use investing went mainstream and before reindustrialization became a national agenda for the US. We look back at what has changed in the last few years and if we are making progress at a better rate in the world of atoms than before. In one way, Mike has seeded the reindustrialization movement by investing in @2112Power, Cofounder of @HadrianInc (which was the only investment he made in 2021) and key orchestrator of the marquee @reindsummit Conference in Detroit which is leading the way on building a platform for policymakers, startups, capital allocators and manufacturers on bringing back the most critical industries through advanced technology adoption. In this episode, Mike talks about how startups have to build a radically different future and through great storytelling bring their customers, investors and employees to their version of the future which they are already convinced of. I also asked him about the origin stories of investing in and finding Twitter, @digg and @lyft. We also discuss how @floodgatefund differentiated itself in 2015 when they were a decade into seed investing and again in 2025 two decades into seed investing. Floodgate has a concentrated investing strategy and having been around for 20 years, they are unique in the sense that they were not tempted to go raise a mega fund and maintain a fund size of around $150m and do only seed. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours with Mike, I hope y’all enjoy this one. One of my favorite quotes from the episode among gems Mike dropped: Even being different worse is better sometimes than being better at the same (thing). - Mike Maples Jr. Special thanks to @NFX for hosting us for this episode.
Excited to publish @WeThe_Builders E15 with Mike Maples (@m2jr), cofounder of @floodgatefund, 8x @Forbes Midas List investor and author of Pattern Breakers. I first found Mike when I came across his podcast with @osmanrashid, (Cofounder of @Chegg) about 6 years ago. I have since admired Mike’s philosophy on startups and investing. Mike is an early investor in category defining companies like @X, @okta, Chegg, @Twitch, @CloverHealth and @AppliedInt to name a few. I hosted a dinner on the topic of technological stagnation about 3 years ago with Mike and a few other investors and founders, this was pre-ChatGPT, before defense or dual-use investing went mainstream and before reindustrialization became a national agenda for the US. We look back at what has changed in the last few years and if we are making progress at a better rate in the world of atoms than before. In one way, Mike has seeded the reindustrialization movement by investing in @2112Power, Cofounder of @HadrianInc (which was the only investment he made in 2021) and key orchestrator of the marquee @reindsummit Conference in Detroit which is leading the way on building a platform for policymakers, startups, capital allocators and manufacturers on bringing back the most critical industries through advanced technology adoption. In this episode, Mike talks about how startups have to build a radically different future and through great storytelling bring their customers, investors and employees to their version of the future which they are already convinced of. I also asked him about the origin stories of investing in and finding Twitter, @digg and @lyft. We also discuss how @floodgatefund differentiated itself in 2015 when they were a decade into seed investing and again in 2025 two decades into seed investing. Floodgate has a concentrated investing strategy and having been around for 20 years, they are unique in the sense that they were not tempted to go raise a mega fund and maintain a fund size of around $150m and do only seed. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours with Mike, I hope y’all enjoy this one. One of my favorite quotes from the episode among gems Mike dropped: Even being different worse is better sometimes than being better at the same (thing). - Mike Maples Jr. Special thanks to @NFX for hosting us for this episode.
Excited to publish @WeThe_Builders E15 with Mike Maples (@m2jr), cofounder of @floodgatefund, 8x @Forbes Midas List investor and author of Pattern Breakers. I first found Mike when I came across his podcast with @osmanrashid, (Cofounder of @Chegg) about 6 years ago. I have since admired Mike’s philosophy on startups and investing. Mike is an early investor in category defining companies like @X, @okta, Chegg, @Twitch, @CloverHealth and @AppliedInt to name a few. I hosted a dinner on the topic of technological stagnation about 3 years ago with Mike and a few other investors and founders, this was pre-ChatGPT, before defense or dual-use investing went mainstream and before reindustrialization became a national agenda for the US. We look back at what has changed in the last few years and if we are making progress at a better rate in the world of atoms than before. In one way, Mike has seeded the reindustrialization movement by investing in @2112Power, Cofounder of @HadrianInc (which was the only investment he made in 2021) and key orchestrator of the marquee @reindsummit Conference in Detroit which is leading the way on building a platform for policymakers, startups, capital allocators and manufacturers on bringing back the most critical industries through advanced technology adoption. In this episode, Mike talks about how startups have to build a radically different future and through great storytelling bring their customers, investors and employees to their version of the future which they are already convinced of. I also asked him about the origin stories of investing in and finding Twitter, @digg and @lyft. We also discuss how @floodgatefund differentiated itself in 2015 when they were a decade into seed investing and again in 2025 two decades into seed investing. Floodgate has a concentrated investing strategy and having been around for 20 years, they are unique in the sense that they were not tempted to go raise a mega fund and maintain a fund size of around $150m and do only seed. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours with Mike, I hope y’all enjoy this one. One of my favorite quotes from the episode among gems Mike dropped: Even being different worse is better sometimes than being better at the same (thing). - Mike Maples Jr. Special thanks to @NFX for hosting us for this episode.
E14 with @packyM about building Not Boring, new media business models, Ramp vs Brex (timely?), his thesis of vertical integrators, his creative process and more. If you’ve spent any time in tech over the past few years, you’ve probably read Not Boring or at least seen a screenshot of it on X/Twitter. Packy built it from a Substack assignment during @david_perell's Write of Passage course into one of the most-read newsletters in technology, now at over 250,000 subscribers. Encouragement goes a long way. David in that course told him his first assignment was the best piece of writing he had seen in the class which gave Packy the confidence to keep going. He talks about his fear of being made fun of (by your friends) if you publish on the internet or nobody caring and ever reading. I can relate, it is one of the reasons I recorded for 6-7 months before hitting publish in July last year. The funny thing is, 250,000 subscribers later that feeling never completely goes away. We touch on that too. Every Not Boring essay is a full-stack teardown, part history lesson, part strategy memo, part “why this would matter in 10 years.” Today, Packy sits at the intersection of media and venture, David Perell described this new era of creators and personalized business models as building a personal monopoly. This applies to podcasting, newsletters or blogs and any other form of new media at the intersection of tech and business where the differentiation lies in the creator - they are like Hollywood talent and the brand they represent is secondary and in some cases irrelevant. They are the brand. We live in the era of what my friend @lochhead would call creator capitalism. For Packy, great writing is deal flow. He has invested in companies like @tryramp (now valued at over $32B) and @AstroMechanica (bringing back supersonic air travel) and many more through his fund. What he now spends most of his time on is doing well researched deep dives which are a function of the relationships he builds along the way. If you are chronically online on X/Twitter, you would have seen his latest masterpiece, a deep dive on @a16z. Hope you enjoy! Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:11 - Why publish on Substack and the origins of Not Boring 01:42 - Write of Passage with David Perell 04:51 - The content pyramid and compounding experiences 15:46 - Insights from working in co-working industry 28:07 - The Ramp case study and the concept of uncertainty window 36:56 - Ramp vs Brex 41:32 - Vertical integrators thesis 51:45 - Media, venture, and the future of tech media 00:00:55 - Twitter vs Substack for creators 1:10:19 - Advice to We The Builders 1:12:59 - Growing the team, getting better, and hiring 1:21:57 - Playing the long game, measuring success over decades 1:33:32 - Wrapping up — favorite shows and books 1:40:53 - Signing off
The Cardano Foundation is supporting @DraperDragon and @Draper_U in proposing an info action to create a US$80M fund focused on scaling Cardano adoption over at least six years and paying returns back to the Cardano treasury. The proposal contributes to the maturing of Cardano’s funding landscape and rests on three pillars: direct investments, growth capital, and educational support.
