Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

Based on extensive research and real-world examples, this book upends accepted wisdom about how to achieve success when launching a startup or creating a new product

“The most important start-up book of the last ten years.” —Steve Blank, co-creator of the Lean Startup movement

The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.” In contrast, other start-ups that were deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right.

Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success. Pattern-breaking success, they reveal, demands a different mindset and actions to harness developments others miss or that may, at first, seem crazy.

Pattern Breakers is filled with firsthand storytelling about initial interactions with some of the most transformative start-ups of recent times. Maples and Ziebelman challenge us to rethink how to transcend the ordinary and achieve the extraordinary—especially in this transformational era of AI.

Mike Maples Jr. is a cofounder and partner at Floodgate, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that pioneered seed stage investing. Floodgate backed many of the most dynamic start-ups of the last two decades at their inception, including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, Okta, Cruise Automation, Applied Intuition, and Rappi. He is host of the podcast Pattern Breakers, where he hosts legendary entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

Peter Ziebelman splits his time between academia and the business world. He is on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches entrepreneurship with a focus on how AI is transforming the start-up landscape. He cofounded Palo Alto Venture Partners, consults on entrepreneurship with Fortune 500 companies, and serves as secretary and as a board member for the nonprofit National Council on Aging (NCOA.org).