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.

Shield AI

Shield AI is building the world's best AI pilot.

In 2 months of joining, I was promoted from a Technical Director role to overall division leadership role along with my technical R&R. 

I lead the team responsible for developing the architecture, software product components and customer project integration of Shield AI's core AI & Autonomy product, i.e., Hivemind Edge (AI pilot for unmanned aerial vehicles).

If you're a top-notch autonomy engineer looking for a high-impact role in a fast-paced growth-stage startup, please DM me.

Director of Engineering, Hivemind Edge (AI & Autonomy)

Shield AI is building the world's best AI pilot.

I am responsible for leading the architecture, execution, and overall direction of Shield AI's core AI & Autonomy product, i.e., Hivemind Edge (AI pilot for unmanned aerial vehicles).

Technical Director, AI & Autonomy

Roboheavy

Advisor

Activate Onboarding

Autonomi Labs 

Helping startups supercharge their Product, Go-to-Market, and Fundraising strategy to accelerate to $1M ARR.

Techstars

Helping startups in the Industries of the Future program succeed.

Startup Mentor

SIERA.AI

SIERA.AI is the leader in vision AI-enabled productivity, safety, and asset health tracking solutions for industrial mobility. SIERA.AI works with enterprise customers across North America including notable Fortune 500/1000 companies.

- Founding CEO & CTO from 2017 to 2022
- Scaled 2 AI, Robotics, and Computer Vision products from concept to 1000+ deployed devices
- Grew team from 0 to 30+ people across USA and India
- Led agile development with 18 software and hardware engineers
- Generated 5 patents, 1 US patent issued
- Launched an AI-enabled enterprise-grade IoT product in < 12 months
- Built founder-led GTM operations and grew annual revenues from 0 to $1M+ with 60+ enterprise customers
- Executed multi-year $25K-$300K deals in enterprise customers
- Raised $6.8M in angel and venture capital from top-tier investors
- Built strategic partnerships with T-Mobile and Mitsubishi Logisnext
- Achieved ~60 NPS with a streamlined onboarding and retention strategy

Texas A&M University

Development of novel motion planning and navigation algorithms for autonomous mobile robots. A couple of notable firsts were accomplished: 
1. Demonstrated belief-space motion planning on physical robots.
2. Invented a novel algorithm for recovery of a kidnapped/lost robot all by itself.
3. Created novel SLAM algorithms for long-term robust localization in unknown environments without revisiting known locations.

Lab Team Lead [EDPL Lab]

Qualcomm

Demonstrated the world's first commercially available self-flying drone that used only a smartphone chip and cameras to navigate autonomously inside a warehouse. Filed 6 US Patents. Awarded Roberto Padovani Fellowship for contributions.

Autonomy Engineer (Ph.D. Internship)

GuideBuddy

First startup. Bootstrapped. An online marketplace connecting travelers with friendly locals. Expanded to about 15 cities with 400 guides in 2 years. Wrote backend Python/Django code which ran on DigitalOcean PaaS. Ran all the GTM functions.

Founder, CEO

Altair

Developed physics simulation models for Automotive & Aerospace applications, and provided training in Altair HyperWorks software to customers all across the UK. Learned enterprise application development, enterprise customer support, and sales engineering.

Application Engineer

The Persistent Founder | I help B2B founders find product market fit and raise capital to accelerate from $0 to $2M ARR | 2x Founder, Raised $7M, Launched 3 AI/Robotics/SaaS products, Sold $100K+ deals to Fortune 500

I am a seasoned VC-backed, 2x startup founder and business executive with over a decade of experience in AI, Robotics, SaaS, Mobility, Supply Chain Tech, Industrial Automation, and B2B Go To Market.

I built my first startup GuideBuddy in 2013 while starting a Ph.D. I lost 2 years and made $0 from it.

I didn’t know how to build a product that my customers really wanted. I wasted 100s of hours building the wrong features, and talking to the wrong people. Eventually, I lost 1000s of dollars of my own money.

I shut down Guidebuddy in 2015 and vowed never to make the same mistakes.

In 2017, I finished my Ph.D. and started SIERA.AI with a $50,000 grant from the US government.

I spent over 3 months just talking to 100+ customers and learning their true pain points.

What happened over the next 5 years changed my life:
- I raised ~$7M of venture capital
- Built a team of 30+ people across 2 continents
- Launched 2 successful AI and Robotics product lines to 1000+ devices
- Scaled a go-to-market program, and onboarded over 60 enterprise customers
- The largest deal we sold was worth over $300,000.

In 2022, I handed over the CEO reins of the business. 

Now I’m on a mission to help 100,000 other ambitious founders build wildly successful technology businesses.

p.s. - I publish a weekly newsletter called The Persistent Founder where I write deep dives into strategies and tactics to accelerate your business from idea to $2M ARR and beyond. Use the link in my bio to subscribe.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own (personal) and do not represent the views or opinions of any employer, past, present, or future.

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The Battle

Michael Houck

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