Michael is the co-founder and CEO of BotBot, where brands design how their voice AI behaves and test it against the outcomes that matter: conversion, revenue, and customer delight.
The other experiment is the company itself: BotBot runs in a truly AI-native way, a few people plus a team of AI agents working from one shared, written-down place. He writes about that experiment every week at Inside AI Native: a Friday digest of the AI-native company space, essays on what building this way actually feels like, and a filmed conversation series.
Before this, Michael was SVP of AI at Checkmate and product engineering lead for IBM Watson Orders, the McDonald's drive-thru voice AI and the largest retail rollout of voice AI at the time. Earlier he co-founded Spinnakr, a predictive analytics startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, 500 Startups, and Point Nine Capital; built analytics used by congressional campaigns nationwide; chaired Sandbox, a global community of 1,500 entrepreneurs and change makers; and co-founded the DC Tech Meetup, recognized as the world's largest.
Away from screens, he volunteers with Mono County Search and Rescue, sails, shoots photographs, and ski mountaineers. A believer in community, words that run, beauty, and the wildly impractical.
Recent Pieces
- The new chaos of being able to build anything
Inside AI Native - Quarterly planning is a scarcity ritual
Inside AI Native - Statement on AI, Trust, and Democratic Institutions
Delivered to the European Parliament, November 20th, 2019 - Will the governed consent to AI driven societies?
World Economic Forum
Featured
- How a Global Social Network Seeks Connection in Decentralization
Stanford University eCorner
Projects
- Inside AI Native
Weekly digest, essays, and filmed conversations on the AI-native company space - SuperHive
Smart Community Newsletter (Ruby/Rails, Redis, Postgres, StimulusJS, AMP)