Working with : : CRONAN : : Maples Investments rebrands as FLOODGATE.
July 19, 2010
Mike Maples Jr., one of the co-founders of Motive, has been investing "as a hobby" for the last five years under the banner of Maples Investments. Some hobby: his investments include Twitter, Digg, Chegg, Wordnik, ngmoco:), Smule, Kno, ModCloth and a dozen or so other well known startups.
At first he put his own money to work. Then he raised a $10 million fund in 2006, and a second $35 million fund in 2008. And along the way he added an amazing partner, Ann Miura-Ko. They recently raised another $70+ million fund. Maples now admits that his hobby is more of an obsession, and they're changing the name of their fund to mark the milestone. We met Mike when he was a project manager at SGI where we named the IRIS Indigoand Crimson series. He wanted a name and identity for their new firm that really set them apart. As he says, "being different is better than being better."
Goodbye, Maples Investments. Hello, FLOODGATE: Opening the Gates of Success.