Michael Houck

Megaphone

We create high-converting LinkedIn, X, and newsletter content for over 50 founders and send it viral with the help of over 400 creators with tens of millions of followers.

Founder

Founding Journey

Helping founders build, grow, and raise capital for their startups.

launch house

An early stage venture fund for companies building the New Silicon Valley. It began as a membership club built around IRL coliving residencies in LA, NYC, Tulum, Aspen, Miami, and Lisbon.

Co-Founder

Airbnb

Product Manager

Uber

Product Analytics, Uber Eats

TherapyNotes, LLC

Software Engineer

85,000+ founders read my free weekly newsletter. Follow me to learn about startups and venture capital.

I didn't know what a startup was until after college. I wasn't lucky with connections or mentors.

But within a few years my startup raised $23 million from a16z + other investors.

Along the way I:
· Cold emailed my way into an early role at Uber Eats
· Got laid off by Airbnb during COVID
· Built an audience of ~100K across LinkedIn and X
· Started a coliving residency for startup founders in Tulum
· Co-founded a venture fund and made over 50+ early stage investments (incl. Figure and Beehiiv)

More recently I've bootstrapped my personal holdco from $0 to $100K MRR in under 2 years. We help founders through content, connections, capital, and services:

· megaphonestudio.com → let my content agency build your newsletter or social media audience
· megaphone.network → partner with big creators in your niche

· join.foundingjourney.com → get my weekly playbooks and advice alongside 75k founders (for free)
· upgrade.foundingjourney.com → get ~100 fundraising case studies from founders I interviewed
· go.foundingjourney.com/fundraising → get connected with investors (including me)

I'm also building a new YouTube channel. Here's a recent video on the history of Silicon Valley: youtu.be/alUQxEldEMM

A weekly newsletter designed to help you build, grow, and raise capital for your startup.

TopRunnerZA

Chief Top Runner

Abantu

Upskilling 1 million SA youth with IT skills to meet the demands of a modern economy.

Value Creator

In my role as Senior Solutions Architect: Digital Solutions Architecture at MTN, I translated business strategies into solutions architecture to drive targeted business outcomes. I led evaluation, design, and analysis for solutions architecture implementation based on enterprise strategy and standards. Additionally, I orchestrated solutions delivery by defining principles, guidelines, and standards to ensure alignment with the future-state architecture vision.

Senior Solutions Architect: Digital Channels

Telkom

Key Responsibilities: 

• Conceptualize ideas into solutions
• Responsible for assessing and defining solutions that aligns with the IT strategy and Architecture principles, policies and standards; and governing their use
• Create end-to-end solutions according to the best practices
• Define and align solutions with Enterprise Architecture strategy and roadmap for Telkom Consumer
• Define best practices, standards and re-usable architecture solution patterns
• Strategic alignment with the agreed Business Architecture
• Strategic alignment of solutions to Security Architecture, Data Architecture, Infrastructure Architecture and Integration Architecture
• Develop design patterns based on adopted architecture technologies and best practices
• Drive the use of microservices architectural approach in design patterns and models within Telkom Consumer
• Collaborate effectively with colleagues from other disciplines to define technology objectives, assess solution options and devise architectural solutions that achieve both strategic business goals and meet operational requirements (PMO, EA, Product Management, IT Strategy, Marketing, etc.)
• An all-rounder, with technical understanding of how systems can work together effectively.
• Provide detailed architectural solution design to delivery teams
• Continuous solution architecture improvements using holistic thinking/ systems approach
• Collaborate with all relevant Telkom domains to communicate the Consumer IT Architecture plans and direction on a continuous basis
• Develop and continuously improve Architecture design documentation for internal, vendor and partner consumption
• Develop and communicate Architecture rollout strategies and data migration solutions
• Support the development of strategic business case and high-level Program plan
• Drive end-to-end solution designs until completion

Manager: IT Strategy & Solution Architecture

Key Responsibilities: 
Telco Digital Solutions Architecture: 
•	Support the product development team to conceptualize, plan and develop customised technical solutions for Telco Digital customers; 
•	Ensure flexible and economical technical designs with timely delivery;
•	Participate in the digital sales cycle to gather customer business needs and define technical requirements for Telco Digital; 
•	Ensure robust interface between IS and other relevant teams to clearly identify root causes of major incidents and resolve these; Apply knowledge of industry trends and developments to improve Telco Digital products and services;
•	Identify platform deficiencies and design and implement effective solutions in collaboration with IS; 
•	Analyse user complaints, incidents and recorded faults for continuous improvement; 
•	Make recommendations with regard to application and program design, standards and program enhancements; 
•	Liaise with technology suppliers and manufacturers to assess the technology changes that are in the pipeline relevant to Telco Digital;
•	Analyse and interpret user journey stats in order to improve the customer experience; 
•	Participate in testing and quality assurance of all products and services for Telco Digital to ensure they adhere to the set specifications 

Partner Management: 
•	 Manage Stakeholder interfaces with relevant 3rd Party Service and Platform providers. Performance 
•	Track new trends and platform, design & development opportunities in the digital space; and 
•	 Create and leverage data analytics driven methodologies to ensure optimal efficiency of digital solutions.

Solutions Architect: Digital Services

Key Responsibilities: 
• Presenting Technical advancements and capabilities of systems to business units 
• Define, Plan, Architect and Implement business requirements 
• Requirements Analysis and Consulting 
• Improve Customer Facing Channels 
• Business Project Tracking and Management 
• Product/System Ownership 
• Current and Future Technical Landscape 
• Align Systems with Company Strategies and Best Practices 
• Capacity Based Planning 
• System Documentation and Training 
• Vendor Management and Relationship 
• ATP and E2E Testing 
• Incident and Event Managing 
• Manage Customer related queries

Senior Engineer : Charging Solutions

Key Responsibilities: 
• Provide technical solutions and advise to key stakeholders (i.e. Marketing Department, other technical teams) 
• Design system architecture and solution design for new MTN products 
• Drive the capturing of Business Requirements and Analysis them in order to successfully produce Functional Requirement Specifications for all projects (External and Internal). 
• Ensure that all Projects go through a proper Inception, Elaboration, Construction Phase, Transition - Validation, Transition - Deployment & Project Close-Out Project life-cycle 
• Working closely with Specialist Engineers to drive overall System strategy making sure it is in- line with Business Roadmaps 
• Ensure planned platforms, products and services are delivered on time to meet operational requirements 
• Review architecture within the Payment Systems area’s and make recommendations according to world best practices to improve performance, stability and product delivery

Engineer : Charging Solutions

Altron

Key Responsibilities: 
• Business and Systems analysis 
• Problem solving and Diagnostic work 
• Creating functional specifications and system design specifications from user requirement specifications for new features/products required by clients(main client Vodacom) 
• Taking responsibility during the software development life cycle to resolve any business related issues 
• Involvement in functional / technical design sessions with the development teams 
• Performing integration testing to ensure that solution for new feature is functioning in integrated system environment and supporting testing efforts 
• Taking ownership to ensure new product features are delivered successfully 
• Ensuring issues are identified, tracked, reported on and resolved in a timely manner

System Analyst

University of Cape Town

Research engineer at UCT,

My research focused on FemtoCells radio networks and how they can used in 5G networks to increase bandwidth for Mobile operator's end users.

Research Engineer

Technical Leadership|Microservices Architect |Solutions Architect| Elite Endurance Athlete

Senior Solutions Architect with 14+ years’ experience in enterprise architecture, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), microservices, and digital transformation within the telecommunications and financial services sectors. Proven ability to translate complex business requirements into scalable, secure, and compliant IT solutions. Skilled in stakeholder management, architecture governance, and technical leadership across large enterprise environments.

Key Highlights:
•
Designed and delivered digital transformation solutions impacting 40M+ customers.
•
Deep expertise in TOGAF, ArchiMate, microservices, SOA, event-driven architecture.
•
Hands-on experience with DevOps (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform), API integration, and cloud migration.
•
Strong background in telco billing systems, payment platforms, and customer experience platforms.
•
Experienced in Agile/SAFe delivery models and incident/root cause management.

Core Competencies

Enterprise Architecture: TOGAF, SOA, Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Solution Design, Architecture Governance Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP (exposure), Cloud Migrations, Hybrid Cloud Integration & DevOps: Kafka, REST APIs, API Management, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform, Git 

Programming & Databases:
Python, JavaScript, React, ReactNative, SQL, NoSQL, Oracle, Database Design & Optimization
Delivery & Methodologies: Agile, Scrum, SAFe, SDLC, Stakeholder Management, Solution Documentation, Incident & Problem Management

Domain Expertise: Telecommunications, Billing Systems

taplio

The Battle

Michael Houck

Papa Derrick Marumo

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