Product Growth Podcast
with Aakash Gupta
The AI-Native PM Operating System
Live demo of Mike’s composable AI operating system — how he turns Claude + MCP into a real PM workflow.
Currently — Head of Product & AI, David’s Bridal · Building Pearl Planner
BROOKLYN, NY · EST. 2010
I build AI products.
I lead the teams that ship them.
Product leader specializing in AI-native products. Head of Product & AI at David’s Bridal, building Pearl Planner. Previously Automattic (WooCommerce, Blaze), EIG (Luster.ai), 10up, DocuSign. Advised Google, Microsoft, Meta, Starbucks.
- Years building product
- 12+
- AI products shipped 0→1
- 3
- Newsletter readers
- 38.4k
- New-user acquisition (Woo)
- 8×
P
Currently building
Pearl Planner — an AI-native wedding planning platform at David’s Bridal.
Selected work
The portfolio is navigable by skill.
Twelve years of shipped work across AI, ecommerce platforms, ad marketplaces, and publishing systems. Open the work explorer and filter by the skill you care about.
~/writing $ ls –recent
Writing
& thinking.
Essays, podcast appearances, and bylines on AI-native product work, MCP, evals, and the craft of shipping with agents. Home base is the Leading Product newsletter — 38,400 readers Sunday mornings.
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38,400 readers
Sunday mornings. One essay on building AI-native products — evals, MCP, prompt infra, the operator’s view.
› essays [recent]
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$ featured
Wedding Color Studio — Helping Couples See Their Whole Wedding in Their Colors
A David’s Bridal-branded React + Gemini app that turns a five-color palette into a named identity, a generative editorial mood board, a six-scene vision board, and a shoppable bridesmaid lineup — wired end-to-end with the polish of a shipping product.
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Build a Composable AI Operating System
Building Your Personal Command Center Learn how to become a 100X PM with a composable tool stack you can run from your favorite AI…
Read →
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How to 10x Quality and Consistency With LLMs
Go beyond your default LLM chat and give yourself real PM superpowers in minutes.
Read →
› podcasts [recent]
Supra Insider
with Ben Lang & Bobby Pinero
AI tooling and MCP demos for product teams
Why MCP changes the shape of internal product tooling — and a walkthrough of the stack Mike actually uses.
Search Engine Journal
Feature
Automattic’s Blaze brings WordPress posts to ad networks
Coverage of the Blaze Ad Platform launch and what it means for the long tail of WordPress publishers.
› bylines [archive]
Endorsements
What the people I’ve worked with actually say.
Six of twenty-nine, verbatim and dated. Managers, peers, and the people who hired me — the full set is on the endorsements page.
It was a pleasure working with Mike, not only for his strategic prowess but for his depth in product knowledge. Mike drove not only his direct marketing work but product requirements, product market fit and the strategic direction of the product we were building.
Elina Vilk · President & Chief Business Officer, David’s Bridal
Peer · May 2023
Smart, driven, and willing to get into the weeds, I could count on him to shape and execute the vision. He has the ability to take abstract ideas and shape them into actionable product strategies that teams can deliver.
Mary Hubbard · Executive Director, WordPress.org
My manager · June 2023
He juggled multiple stakeholders and teams, spanning engineering, design, marketing, and finance… He took on all sorts of additional work—whatever was needed to “make things happen”… His apparently-limitless energy was an invaluable driver to our work.
Beau Lebens · Head of Woo, Automattic
Peer · May 2023
Mike brings an entrepreneurial energy, no-BS style, creativity, and fearlessness to challenge his teams and leaders to any job he’s in. He’s the unique leader that even inside a larger business stays hungry, refuses to play office politics, and prioritizes what really matters to the bottom line.
Jake Goldman · Founder of 10up; Partner at Fueled
My manager · May 2023
He is the rare talent with a balanced blend of deep product expertise and business acumen. Mike is exceptional at envisioning the future and building plans to further define, design and deliver that future.
Karen Mangia · WSJ Bestselling Author & Keynote Speaker
My manager · August 2024
Mike quickly rose to the top as one of our most strategic leaders of people and projects, not only driving positive results on his own work, but supporting and inspiring his direct reports and colleagues to do their best work as well… I count Mike among a small group of leaders that I would hire again in an instant.
Grant Landram · Senior Leadership, 10up
Hired and managed me · March 2020