Create New Categories

Mike Maples Jr., Floodgate

Companies that top their category don’t just sell more product than their competitors, they likely created the category and made people see the world in a new way, according Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate, which has invested in groundbreaking startups such as lyft, TaskRabbit and Twitter. He points to how Apple essentially created the categories of digital-music players, smartphones and tablets.