page_title: Floodgate Fund
section_title: Investments
hierarchical_section_title: Floodgate Fund / Investments
caption_attribution_description: From the session "Make Your Ideas Matter" Photo: Ståle Grut / NRKbeta Session description: The world runs on ideas. Whether it’s a new app or a lifesaving medication, new ideas can drive our collective progress. But which ideas are worthy and what are the best ways to advance them? Scott Cook came up with the idea for Quicken while watching his wife struggle to balance the checkbook at their kitchen table. Mike Maples has been an early investor in some of the biggest ideas of our time – including Twitter, Twitch.tv and Chegg. Join a conversation with these experts to learn new methods to drive ideation, how to test ideas in more measurable ways and advice to effectively communicate your ideas to decision-makers.
context_page_description: Floodgate Fund is a venture capital firm based in the United States created by Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura-Ko. It was originally named Maples Investments but was renamed Floodgate Fund in March 2010. It is focused on investments in technology companies in Silicon Valley.
context_section_description: In March 2017, Floodgate raised $131 million for its sixth fund. In previous years, their fifth fund closed at $76 million, fourth fund closed at $75 million and their third fund at $73.5 million.
  Floodgate has invested in a number of companies including Twitter, Digg, location-based services company Gowalla, professional networking service BranchOut, Chegg, Formstack, Milk Inc., TaskRabbit, self-storage marketplace SpareFoot, and seasteading platform company Blueseed.
  As of 2017, they've also invested in Lyft, Refinery29, LabDoor, education startup MissionU, legal discovery startup TextIQ,  Okta and Rappi.
caption: Mike Maples at South by Southwest in 2017
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