Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Are there any other meetings that you have for entrepreneurs? Mike: Sometimes we’ll introduce the entrepreneur to other people in our network, both to try to help the entrepreneur but also to assess the opportunity. But for the most part, if the phone call goes really

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many pitches do you receive in a month from all your sources? Mike: We get about 600 pitches. Irina: Out of all of those pitches, how many deserve a closer look? Mike: Out of 600, we’ll probably meet with about thirty or forty. And we

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Mike: It’s interesting – and maybe you’ve experienced this, too – in a lot of ways, deal flow, if you’re not careful, becomes like messages in your e-mail inbox. And if you’re not careful, you find yourself becoming an efficient processor of things that don’t matter that

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What is your current source of deal flow? Mike: That’s a good question. There are quite a few, actually. Some of it just comes in naturally from business plans at Floodgate.com. We probably get about one hundred plans a week from that channel. Then we get

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Who do you think will come and fill this $6 million to $8 million gap? Mike: It’s a good question. I guess you could argue that as the gap widens, you could even segment the gap itself.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What are the key drivers of superangel investing? Mike: There is a combination of things. I think that part of it is low cost, but there’s a subtlety to it as well, which is this notion of hyper-agile behaviors in a company. So, if you’re able

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the twelfth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Mike Maples, managing partner of Floodgate, a fund with the superangel approach that bridges the gap between initial seed money raised from traditional angel investors and traditional VCs, and aims to

Read Full Article »