Floodgate Insights

“No Software.” “Design is multiplayer.” “Belong anywhere.”

These phrases didn’t just describe products; they installed new worldviews. Salesforce made the cloud feel inevitable. Figma redefined creation as collaboration. Airbnb transformed hospitality into belonging.

Each of these breakthrough startups rewrote its market’s belief system through language.

When SmarterDX was recently acquired for over $1B in under four years, it marked a milestone that made me reflect on Floodgate’s own healthcare journey. Michael Gao, Josh Geleris, and their team built an extraordinary company that embodies many of the themes we believe will drive massive outcomes in healthcare and we had had a chance to witness that growth from seed to exit.

In Florence, one of Galileo’s telescopes is on display. It’s a simple leather tube with scratched glass and optics that look primitive today. Yet it was enough to overturn a conviction that had guided human thought for centuries: Earth was not the fixed center of the cosmos but just another planet in motion.

Throughout history, technological inflections have fundamentally altered how we live and work. In venture capital, we're constantly searching for inflections—external forces that propel startups beyond what they could achieve through effort alone. As my partner Mike Maples defines it, an inflection is "an event that creates the potential for radical change in how people think, feel, and act."

Most startups try to win by being better than what already exists or leapfrogging their competitors. But real breakthroughs aren’t just step-change improvements. They’re rewritings of the rules.

“We invest in people.” 

This phrase is the VC industry’s most common refrain - yet it often masks a simple truth: most VCs are investing in resumes. They seek out the senior engineer from Stripe, the researcher from OpenAI, or the ML engineer from DeepMind. It’s less about the individual and more about the institutional validation they bring.