Pattern Breakers

Silicon Valley made the hoodie a symbol of authenticity. But founders send a message before they speak, and it isn't always the one they intend. What happens when how you present yourself no longer reflects the leader you've become? Victoria Cardenas Hitchcock helps founders close that gap. A Bay Area image, wardrobe, and lifestyle consultant, she sees possibilities others miss and has the candor to say when something isn't working. For Hitchcock, personal style isn't about dressing up. It's about making outward appearance match identity, ambition, and the demands of leadership. In this episode of Pattern Breakers, Mike Maples Jr. talks with Hitchcock about Silicon Valley's changing style, the impressions founders overlook, and how to become more intentional without sacrificing authenticity. Metronome founder and CEO Scott Woody joins to share what working with Hitchcock taught him about how he shows up as a leader. 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!

When Max Mullen was a teenager, he used his mother’s credit card to order some candy and soda off the internet from the online company Kozmo.com. Less than an hour later his order arrived, and Mullen was hooked on grocery delivery as a breakthrough idea that could make people's lives easier. But by the time Mullen became a startup founder years later, Kozmo, Webvan, and their peers were buried in a Dot-Com graveyard, and investors were skeptical that grocery delivery would ever resonate beyond San Francisco. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Mullen about co-founding Instacart, lessons learned from the company’s early days, and why he divides startup decisions into three realms: science, religion, and art. Mullen also discusses why some of Instacart’s success traces back to the manager of a local Trader Joe’s, the moment he knew the company had found national product-market fit, and why he’s interested in robotic pets now that he’s a startup investor.   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!

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!

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!

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!