Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
Floodgate
The Palo Alto "micro-VC" founded by Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura-Ko that helped invent the modern seed fund — staying deliberately small, taking board-level positions in a handful of companies a year, and building its brand around a theory of "inflections", "insights" and "thunder lizards" that backed Lyft, Twitch, Okta and Applied Intuition early.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2006 as Maples Investments (Mike Maples Jr.); renamed Floodgate in March 2010
- Founders
- Mike Maples Jr.; Ann Miura-Ko joined as partner ~2007–08 and is described as co-founding partner
- Headquarters
- Palo Alto, California (Bay Area); investments across the US
- Ownership / structure
- Private partnership; no outside stake in the management company reported
- Leadership (2026)
- Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura-Ko (founding partners); partners include Iris Choi (joined 2013), Arjun Chopra and Mike Heller (roster verify)
- AUM / capital raised
- ~$500m under management (reported); funds of ~$10m (2006) rising to ~$146m (Fund VII, 2021); eight funds raised by 2025 (reported; Fund VIII size verify)
- Stage focus
- Pre-seed and seed; first cheques typically ~$0.5–3m; four to six new investments per partner per year
- Signature investments
- Lyft (Zimride), Twitch (Justin.tv), Okta (Saasure), Twitter, Digg, Chegg, TaskRabbit, Refinery29, Rappi, Outreach, Applied Intuition; failures: Gowalla, BranchOut, Digg (sold for parts)
8 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2007
Justin tv
Seed
2007
Twitter
Early Angel / Seed Investment
2009
Gowalla
Seed
2009
Okta
Seed
2010
BranchOut
Seed
2010
Lyft
Seed
2010
TaskRabbit
Seed
2017
Applied Intuition
Seed