Currently — Head of Product & AI, David’s Bridal · Building Pearl Planner
BROOKLYN, NY · EST. 2010
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.
Selected work
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
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.
Sunday mornings. One essay on building AI-native products — evals, MCP, prompt infra, the operator’s view.
› essays [recent]
$ featured
It’s me. I’m the goose. A quick apology for the inbox flood — and the setting that caused it.
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…
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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 →
› podcasts [recent]
Live demo of Mike’s composable AI operating system — how he turns Claude + MCP into a real PM workflow.
Why MCP changes the shape of internal product tooling — and a walkthrough of the stack Mike actually uses.
Coverage of the Blaze Ad Platform launch and what it means for the long tail of WordPress publishers.
› bylines [archive]
Endorsements
Pulled from managers, direct reports, peers, and clients across the last decade — real names, with the full set on the endorsements page.
Mike is the rare talent with a balanced blend of deep product expertise and business acumen. He is exceptional at envisioning the future and building the plans to define, design, and deliver it.
Karen Mangia · President & Chief Strategy Officer
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 · Product Leadership · WordPress.com
Mike brings an entrepreneurial energy, no-BS style, creativity, and fearlessness to challenge his teams and leaders. He’s the unique leader who, even inside a larger business, stays hungry, refuses to play office politics, and prioritizes what really matters to the bottom line.
Jake Goldman · Founder · 10up
Mike was easily one of the best managers and mentors I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with — and a critical factor in my career progression over the last five years. A great leader, supportive manager, and strategic implementer.
Daine Mawer · Associate Director, Front-end Engineering
It’s rare that you get to report to a manager who motivates and encourages you to grow as much as Mike does. He expertly navigates being a supervisor, a mentor, and a fellow contributor — all while being an incredibly fun person to work alongside.
Brandi Awbrey · QA Engineering · Chime
His knowledge is vast and thorough — result-driven, efficient, and careful. Michael is probably one of the best team players I’ve ever met in my life.
Antonio Deleon · Growth · Zoom (ex-AWS)
It was a pleasure working with Mike — not only for his strategic prowess but for his depth in product knowledge. He drove product requirements, product-market fit, and the strategic direction of what we were building.
Elina Vilk · CMO / CBO · ex-Meta, ex-PayPal
He juggled multiple stakeholders and teams across engineering, design, marketing, and finance, and took on whatever was needed to make things happen. His apparently-limitless energy was an invaluable driver to our work.
Beau Lebens · Head of Engineering, WooCommerce · Automattic
Mike quickly rose to the top as one of our most strategic leaders of people and projects — not only driving results on his own work, but inspiring his colleagues to do their best work too. I count him among a small group of leaders I would hire again in an instant.
Grant Landram · Senior Leadership · 10up