I'm Michael. I'm broadly excited about computers and think we're only on the cusp of realizing their potential. I fluctuate between being an engineer, a startup founder, and venture investor.
Current work
- I'm an early investor in 30+ startups and actively invest out of a small early stage fund.
- I enjoy collecting and making computer art.
Past work
- I created Founder Focus Group, a program that supports Interact founders in the nascent days of exploring founding a company. 80+ founding teams have participated to date.
- In 2014, I co-founded an intelligent assistant company, Clara Labs, with Maran Nelson. We sold the company in 2019 in an unconventional two-part aquisition to Twitter and Teamable.
- Before that, I was the 11th employee as a hardware engineer at Misfit Wearables, where I helped stand up an assembly and test factory in Korea and ship the Shine's v1 firmware preceding its acquisition by Fossil Group.
- While studying EE/CS at UT Austin, I started HackTX, spent multiple summers interning at Apple, and worked part-time for Gilman Louie and Stewart Alsop's venture fund for three years.
- I'm from Texas, where I got started in computing by programming iOS games for the early app store.