I'm Michael. I build software for things that exist in the real world.
I was the technical co-founder of Upverter (YC W11), one of three founders. We built it for about six and a half years and sold it to Altium, where I stayed on as VP of Product. Then I spent nearly four years as the top technical executive at Sheertex (SRTX), leading a 46-person technology organization and architecting Cortex, the platform that ran its factory. Now I'm building AI products from Toronto.
Specialized agents for the operational work of a business, over the tools you already use, behind an approval gate the customer sets: full review, a spending threshold, or autonomous. An HQ agent routes the work. The deepest teams are marketing (campaign management across Meta, Google, and TikTok, with LLMs reading the creative itself rather than just the numbers) and M&A diligence. FP&A and support come later.
Started at bedtime: my six-year-old wanted to be the kid in the story, then he wanted his best friend in it too. Now it's a real product. Upload one photo, pick one of eight art styles, and get an illustrated book where your child is the hero. Free to try; $24.99 for a gift story or $14.99/month for families.
People are asking ChatGPT and Claude instead of Googling. Get Indexed tracks how often ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity cite a brand, and for which queries.
Architected the factory operating system for Sheertex (SRTX), the company making durable sheer tights on industrial knitting machines, and built it with my team over nearly four years as a complete rewrite of the earlier system. Cortex connected the machines on the floor, every production run, and the business metrics into one piece of software, and became the company's system of record.
Technical co-founder (one of three) of a cloud-based EDA platform for hardware engineers. PCB design and circuit schematics in the browser, before that was normal. Went through Y Combinator in Winter 2011. Operated for about six and a half years, built by a team in Toronto, and sold to Altium.
I've owned the whole product: sales calls, roadmaps, and the code. I find the problem first, then build the smallest thing that tests the answer. More about how I work →