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.

Inbank

We are on a mission to take financing out of traditional banking and bring it to the point of sale, right where everyday commerce happens.

Inbank offers frictionless financing solutions for retail in all shapes and sizes, from bricks-and-mortar to cutting-edge business models and platforms online and offline. That way, financing anything from sneakers to solar panels happens exactly when and where it's needed. By making financing an integral part of a product or service, we help our 5,800 merchant partners thrive while customers get access to best-in class financing wherever they are.

Stack: Java 17, Gradle, Spring Boot, Junit5, Mockito, PostgreSQL, Docker, Jenkins

Product Engineer

Stack: Java 17, Gradle, Spring Boot, Junit5, Mockito, PostgreSQL, Docker, Jenkins

askRobin

Disrupting the financial industry! Building the credit marketplace and making credit accessible to everyone. 

We help more than 1.5 million people in Latin America to improve their financial health, give them more control, and connecting them with more than 200 financial entities, including fintech, credit companies, credit repair companies, and neobanks offering digital accounts to meet their needs.

Led the integration with Mexican Credit Information Bureau for accurate credit scoring. Worked closely with tech team, customers, and partners on product improvements and expansion.

Head of Operations

Bolt

Built the Future of Transportation and Mobility for 30 million users in 150 cities and 35 countries. 

Early in Bolt, joined when Bolt was known as Taxify and had less than 90 people, left when the headcount was 3000+. Worked August 2019 - July 2020 from Bolt's Paris office.

Part of Bolt Mexico founding team. Hired, led, and grew a team of exceptional operations specialists and improved efficiency and productivity. Expanded to new cities in Mexico, researched industry and competition, hired initial city teams, developed and coached them so they had the skills and knowledge to excel in their roles. Supported new city launches. Identified new opportunities and launched new categories. Managed multi-million € budget, had full P&L responsibilities, improved pricing strategy, P&L/Cashflow, forecasted, and controlled costs.

Operations Manager

European Innovation Academy

Built world's leading entrepreneurship programs, worked with UC Berkeley, Stanford, Google, Amadeus, IBM, FCA, Ferrero, Ferrari in Nice (France), Torino, Milano (Italy), and Silicon Valley (US).

Designed and developed new products and services for and with top entrepreneurs and corporations. Managed cross-functional team in 3 different countries (France, Italy, Portugal) ranging from designers to technicians. Reduced operations costs over 200K€ in ongoing annualized operating expenses by negotiating contracts, pricing and fees, while ensuring the quality of services.

http://inacademy.eu/

Co-Founder & COO

AwarderApp

Selected as 1 of 250 of Europe’s best tech entrepreneurs to EU-XCEL, Horizon 2020, and Startup Europe accelerator. 

Built a two-sided online marketplace to connect active people through gamification with retails and restaurants.

AwarderApp was a Health Informatics, marketplace start-up for B2B and B2C. Meant to be an environment for e-commerce and active people, where users were able to exchange their covered distances or burnt calories for the goods such as meals, sports equipment, etc. Like Miles and Mores but on the ground and for everyone! The idea was to motivate people to be healthier through personal awards, where effort equals physical good from Awarderapp partners such as Carrefour, Sports Directs, Nike, etc. who benefit from brand awareness and customer loyalty programs. The concept of the startup was developed in Ireland by our great team of 5.

We were part of EU-XCEL, Horizon 2020 and Startup Europe 6 months acceleration program. http://euxcel.eu/

Co-Founder and CEO 

Itella Information AS (Estonia)

Automated and optimized processes that allowed to scale sending out ~250,000 invoices, bank statements, newsletters and notices a day from industries such as banking, insurance, telecommunications, media, energy and the public sector.

http://www.opuscapita.com/

Mechatronics Engineer

Software Developer | Software Engineer | Full-Stack Developer 👨‍💻

I am a Full Stack Software Engineer skilled in Java, Go, and JavaScript, with a focus on building scalable, high-performance, and secure software systems. My experience includes designing RESTful APIs, working with monoliths and microservices, developing both frontend and backend applications, and working with databases to deliver impactful solutions.

Prior to my engineering career, I've done a bunch of cool stuff in different domains. I was fortunate to work for over 10+ years in operations in tech startups across various industries in Europe and North America, ranging from small startups to unicorn. Discovering the unknown, working on very interesting problems and challenges, learning most things on the go.

This unique blend of experiences has equipped me with a strong understanding of business processes and user needs, positioning me uniquely to develop software solutions that are not only technically sound but also align closely with business objectives and create customer value.

I am naturally curious and proactive, with good communication skills and a never-ending hunger to grow and learn. I have a strong bias towards action and a "get it done" mentality. I am result-driven with a "can-do, I will figure it out" attitude. I am a builder and problem solver at heart, and I love everything related to tech.

I love working with awesome people, preferably in a small team where I can make an impact quickly.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

- Programming Languages: Go, Java, Python, Javascript/Typescript, SQL
- Framework and other technologiess: Django, React, Node.js, Next.js, Spring Boot
- Databases: Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB
- Web Technologies: HTML, CSS, Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap
- Shell Scripting: Bash, Zsh
- DevOps: Docker, Linux
- Version Control & Collaboration: Git, GitHub
- APIs: Rest, GraphQL
- Cloud infrastructure: AWS (EC2, S3), DigitalOcean

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The Battle

Michael Houck

Egon Saks

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