Pattern Breakers

Pattern Breakers has its roots in the time when Mike Maples, a seasoned venture capitalist, was stumped, unable to get a grip on why some businesses he funded - Twitter, Twitch, and Okta, for example - took off, while others, some deemed "most likely to succeed," shut their doors despite doing everything right. Was it dumb luck that separated gold from dross? What Maples and Stanford University's Peter Ziebelman discovered contradicts accepted wisdom and upends today's formulaic approach to entrepreneurship: that one should look for a big open market, talk to prospective customers to find their highest needs, their "pain points" in that market, and then build what is missing. Rather, patterns are broken and the potential for breakthrough opportunity created when inflection points-events that offer the potential for new empowering capabilities-are harnessed, transforming how people think, work, feel, and act. Uber and Lyft, for example broke the pattern of transportation by harnessing the power of the GPS-enabled smartphone. The Covid pandemic spurred telemedicine. Pattern-breaking ideas like these unlock different powers and radically change the rules, driven by people with the independent-mindedness and courage to divert from the consensus.

Pattern Breakers has its roots in the time when Mike Maples, a seasoned venture capitalist, was stumped, unable to get a grip on why some businesses he funded - Twitter, Twitch, and Okta, for example - took off, while others, some deemed "most likely to succeed," shut their doors despite doing everything right. Was it dumb luck that separated gold from dross? What Maples and Stanford University's Peter Ziebelman discovered contradicts accepted wisdom and upends today's formulaic approach to entrepreneurship: that one should look for a big open market, talk to prospective customers to find their highest needs, their "pain points" in that market, and then build what is missing. Rather, patterns are broken and the potential for breakthrough opportunity created when inflection points-events that offer the potential for new empowering capabilities-are harnessed, transforming how people think, work, feel, and act. Uber and Lyft, for example broke the pattern of transportation by harnessing the power of the GPS-enabled smartphone. The Covid pandemic spurred telemedicine. Pattern-breaking ideas like these unlock different powers and radically change the rules, driven by people with the independent-mindedness and courage to divert from the consensus.

A radical set of new ideas for how entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate leaders can use the pattern-breaking mindset to dominate the future 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 startups 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 vividly illustrate an unexpected world where chaos is welcome, naysayers are a positive signal, movements galvanize believers--but one that ultimately change the future. They challenge us to rethink how to transcend the ordinary and achieve the extraordinary.