“Only huge ideas are worth sacrifice of entrepreneurship.”

Joining a startup is so popular and fashionable, many entrepreneurs and engineering graduates do so because they feel it’s an experience they should have.

And that decision is flawed.

FLOODGATE managing partner and entrepreneur Mike Maples, Jr. outlined his steps for startup success in an intimate talk with the Stanford community at the d.school in March. He stressed it’s not enough to have a good idea; startups must have the characteristics of a ThunderLizard.

Authentic. Ripe Knowledge. Break from Consensus. 

Maples’ now familiar metaphor describes such powerful startups that they completely shake up the tech industry – they’re small, they disrupt the sector, and have the potential for huge exits. He pointed to FLOODGATE investments Twitter and ModCloth as examples. In his talk, Maples outlined the driving qualities of ThunderLizards, and stressed the importance of passion.

“The first mistake I see people make is that they don’t think big enough about their startup,” he said. “We in tech industry live by set of rules that no one else gets to live by, known as Moore’s Law. Stopping that is like stopping a tidal wave, it just can’t be done.”

And the qualities of a ThunderLizard: thinking big, taking risks, being passionate, those can’t be developed over time.

“If you’re going to do a great piece of work, it has to come from within you; there’s something in your DNA that you want to inflict upon the world,” he said. Just like Godzilla.

Maples find these characteristics in entrepreneurs younger than 30. The ‘visionary entrepreneur’ is “not someone who sees visions.” Maples calls Silicon Valley the birthplace of ThunderLizards, citing the number of Stanford graduates with risky ideas.

“Naiveté is a competitive weapon,” he said. “You’re not yet encumbered by conventional wisdom.”

Maples looks to invest in startups that aim for idealism with low start-up costs. Sound risky? He pointed to Microsoft, which initially raised $1 million in funding; eBay raised $5 million. Their success stemmed from a technology advantage, that’s usually specific and can predict how a niche will evolve.

And that’s why startups that iterate on current market products, or can’t define their company’s culture, don’t catch Maples’ eye.

“A startup should be able to start a forest fire with just one match.” 

Yeah – not whatever.

I’ve made a ton of mistakes over the past few years starting companies and I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to watch countless other start-ups avoid and make their own mistakes. When it comes to young start-up teams, here are my top lessons learned:

Don’t Underestimate the Importance and Value of Team.

Tremendous value can literally be pulled out of thin air when smart people unite around a common passion. I’ve seen it happen many times and it’s truly magical to watch great teams form and create value for their customers. We started FounderSoup because we wanted to help our friends find the awesome co-founders they needed to get their start-ups off the ground.

We could have each tried to play match-maker within our own personal networks. Instead, we pooled our resources, brought our separate networks together, and were able to throw successful pitch events from Day One. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Play to your Strengths.

In the very early days, before you’ve proven that your customers will lay down money for your product (aka traction), focus on pitching your team more than your technology, products, market, or anything else. Whether you’re talking to potential partners, seed investors, or even your early adopters, you want to convince people to invest in you. Savvy partners and investors know that rockstars figure out how to solve market and technology challenges.

It’s easy to say no to an idea; it’s way harder to say no to awesome people who are passionate about solving a problem. So play to your strengths and pitch yourself and your past successes more than your ever-changing ideas.

Learn to Communicate and Work with Anyone.

I’ve found that people vary wildly in their sensitivity to other people’s needs and thoughts. This isn’t a strength of mine, but I’ve learned a few simple things that have improved relationships, saved friendships, and ultimately made me more successful:

• Constantly put yourself in the other person’s shoes: We’re all human and it can be easy to forget that in the heat of the moment.
• Learn to listen well: This is the easiest way to understand what someone is feeling and thinking.
• Separate the people from the problem: If you can reframe a disagreement with someone into an opportunity to solve a problem together, you can both focus your energy on tackling the problem instead of one another. Both Getting to Yes and Difficult Conversations provide great frameworks for becoming a better communicator and learning to work with just about anyone.

You Are Not Alone.

Fostering an “Us versus Them” mentality can be incredibly powerful for uniting your team (whether “them” is the status quo or your competition). But if you take this mentality too far too early, then you run the risk of missing out on building an amazing team. Instead, seek out amazing people who are passionate about the same things you are and find small ways to bind your fates together.

Inevitably, someone (maybe your competitor) will have the epiphany and discover product-market fit. Learn from successes like PayPal, which was the merger of Confinity (Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, Max Levchin) and X.com (Elon Musk). Instead of continuing to bleed one another dry in a heated competition, they joined forces and turned their attention to mutual enemies, like the Russian Mafia and eventually eBay, who would later acquire them for $1.5 billion. “Us versus Them” can be a powerful motivator just make sure you’ve picked the right “Us” first.

Start Building a Strong Network Now.

Jay de la Torre, FounderSoup Event Architect recently told me, “An entrepreneur in a vacuum is a wantrepreneur.” He’s completely right, and the more amazing people who know and trust you, the more likely you are to succeed with your venture.

Some people think that building a network is sleazy but I completely disagree. What’s sleazy about meeting new people and maintaining old relationships? Nothing. Personally, I find the act of helping someone discover or act on their passion really fulfilling and I find that most people are willing to help me out whenever they can. Sure, it can feel intimidating meeting someone new or asking an old friend for help, but just remember that that person might be able to help you make your dream a reality. It also helps to recognize that you’d help them if you knew they needed something. So be sure to get out there and connect with lots of different kinds of people.

If you’re part of the Stanford community and interested in meeting talented student entrepreneurs, then we want you to join the FounderSoup Network. It doesn’t matter if you’re an engineer, in business, a design guru, or are studying medicine, urban studies, or a hard science – if you’re passionate about entrepreneurship, then you’re welcome to apply to join the FounderSoup Network and pitch at our next event here.

Bottom Line:

Team is everything because people are everything. Great companies start when amazing people unite around a shared purpose.

[cross-posted on AndrewBellay.com]

Mike Maples, Jr. is the managing partner of FLOODGATE. Prior to becoming a full-time investor, Mike was an entrepreneur and operating executive who worked in a variety of senior management roles in high-growth companies. Before joining FounderSoup to talk about how startups can become ThunderLizards, Kate, our Editorial Director, grilled him with some tough questions.

Q: What’s a ThunderLizard look like?
A: Ever watched Godzilla? My idea was to come up with a metaphor for great startups — I thought of something more basic and primal. Godzilla mutated as it swam, and emerges and begins to destroy cities, breathes fire, stuff like that. In the startup arena, that should be your mindset.

Q: Which of your portfolio companies is your favorite?
A: Each start-up is like it’s own snowflake, every one makes you happy for different reasons. Twitter has been fun to watch, but the most satisfying start-ups were the ones about to die and you put in last bit of money, and one last crank to make it go, like Chegg. The companies that are most fun are the ones you stare death in the face and you didn’t blink.

Q: What’s your favorite video game?
A: I’m pretty old school, I liked PacMan.

Q: What’s your biggest weakness?
A: I say yes to too many things and I’m too optimistic; you have to have a healthy sense of what could go wrong. I like to think that every problem has a solution, and it can be very productive but sometimes you have to say, this just isn’t working.

Q: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
A: I always wanted to start a software company.

Q: Do you prefer Silicon Valley or Austin?
A: Silicon Valley: it’s the place thunder lizards hatch most often. It’s the cultural DNA of Stanford that I prefer. People say Stanford happened because of Terman, but I think it happened because of the gold rush. Let’s say you and I are both in a river and you pull out a huge rock of gold and I don’t. Does that make you smarter than me? No. At Stanford, the default assumption is ‘might as well try for idealism,’ and most places don’t start from that premise.

Q: How did you get into calligraphy?
A: When I was little kid, I became interested in old English manuscripts, and got interested in typography. My mom knew one of the foremost calligraphers in Oklahoma and introduced me, and he gave me a starter kit. When I was in seventh grade, I almost wrote a book called ‘kids can too.’

Q: What do you do to clear your mind?
A: I’m getting better about meditating each day, and finding the ability to step back…In venture capital, there are really high highs and low lows, and you need to have the ability to step away from it.

Multitasking is actually death. It allows multiple thoughts to occupy the mind at same the time, and it is better for things to be the ant under magnifying glass for a set period of time, rather than doing 10 things at once.

Q: What’s your favorite food?
A: That’s a tossup between pizza and steak. If you told me I could only eat those things for the rest of my life without gaining any weight, I would do it.

Special thanks to our photographer, Matt Tilghman.

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