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.

The Beard Club

Sr. Director of Retention

PetHonesty

• Led customer retention strategy for the DTC business with a focus on converting leads and increasing LTV through email, SMS, direct mail, and onsite marketing campaigns.

Director of Retention

• Grew monthly email revenue 457% in first 6 months at the company
• Launched SMS marketing channel

Senior CRM Manager

Hopsy

• Led CRM strategy and implementation for the business.
• Doubled conversion rates for leads (acquisition), canceled subscriptions (win-back), and lapsed users (retention) through targeted, automated email flows.
• Executed multiple product launches, acquisition offers, and expansion into new U.S. states.

CRM Manager

FanDuel

• Launched CRM program for new Sportsbook product in September 2018.
• Developed and executed weekly CRM campaign calendar with focus on onboarding, promotions, and cross sell from our Fantasy product.
• Continuously tested and optimized targeted customer life cycle campaigns.

Manager, Sportsbook Retention

• Managed CRM calendar on a weekly basis, prioritizing and scheduling all stakeholder requests. Made strategic decisions on channel selection that drove impactful results.
• Built automated campaigns and dynamic landing pages that increased campaign efficiency and provided users with a more personalized customer experience.

Associate, CRM

• Coordinated the daily execution of email and mobile marketing campaigns with a focus on customer retention, reactivation, and cross selling.
• Built an email metrics dashboard that contained all engagement metrics, A/B tests, and trend data, making recommendations for improvement.

Coordinator, Email Marketing

GCP Applied Technologies

• Managed email, website, and social media marketing strategy including topic and calendar development, creative copywriting, website editing, analytics, and video creation.
• Acted as interim traffic manager for all projects within marketing communications department and created a new file naming structure as part of a project/asset centralization project.

Marketing Communications Specialist

Elmwood Day Camp

• Led eight 30-45 minute classes per day teaching children ages 3-10 years old the fundamental skills of four sports: basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer.

Athletics Specialist

Cornell University

• Provided day-to-day support for the coaching staff and development of players.
• Created Excel database with player info to streamline recruiting process.

Men's Basketball Manager

Baltimore Ravens

• Interned for the Baltimore Ravens the summer after they won Super Bowl XLVII.
• Provided friendly customer service and helped execute all fan events at training camp.

Training Camp Marketing Intern

You can sell anything with the combination of copywriting + storytelling + email. Join 15,000+ entrepreneurs, and I'll show you how every week at writeoncopy.co

The back of my baseball card:

Experienced customer retention marketer. Generated over $50,000,000 in revenue throughout my career through Email & SMS marketing.

What I'm working on:

By day, you'll find me at Beard Club, laser-focused on increasing retention rates and lifetime value (LTV) for our subscription business. If you want to grow the best beard of your life, hit us up!

By night, I'm building:

• A loyal twitter following - https://twitter.com/joe_portsmouth
• A newsletter to help you become a better copywriter - https://writeon.beehiiv.com/

DMs are always open!

taplio

The Battle

Michael Houck

Joe Portsmouth

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