Founder of Your AI Department, where we offer AI Strategy to enterprises afraid of falling behind the AI curve. We are FAANG‑trained engineers & exited founders, on-call to turn AI hype into clear ROI for businesses.
Consulting
Michael Greenberg
Startup Founder | Product Manager | Product Designer | Company Strategy | Travel Agent
San Francisco, United States (-08:00 UTC) Englishfrom San Francisco, United States
Usually responds in 18 hours
$80 / hour
Price per hour
30 min
Time Blocks Available
5.00
11 reviews / 16 sessions
Thu
26
Next availability
He really made me think about how to approach UX for my prototype from first principles, in particular how I can anchor the design in what the audience finds familiar. Invaluable 30 mins.
Michael Taylor
Michael was super helpful and had some really insightful stuff to say about founders and equity distribution when a startup is just starting out. It’s clear he’s been around the block a few times with startups. I highly recommend reaching out to him!
Steve Reinhardt
Michael is amazing! Extremely knowledgable and efficient - knocked out all my questions 10/10 and great GTM strategy insights
colleen burns
Bio
Michael is Entrepreneur in Residence at a Venture Capital fund where he builds 0-1 products and consults on portfolio company strategy. He is also the cofounder of Your AI Department, an AI strategy and implementation consultancy. Prior to these roles, he cofounded and exited an Agentic AI company. He is a product leader with a decade of experience building, designing, and shipping Digital Assistant and Avatar products in Silicon Valley. Sharpening his teeth at Google, Meta and Samsung, he is a Webby Award winning designer, holds half a dozen patents, and has a successful track record leading teams building products on the cutting-edge of innovation.
Expertise
Advice on funding
Having just navigated this myself, there are some critical nuggets of information you NEED to have when fundraising. My top 3 are: 1. Treat it as a full-time job. Don't half-ass your fundraise for 3 months. Rather, do NOTHING but fundraise for 3 weeks. 2. It's a numbers game. Expect to talk to 50 investors before one shows genuine interest. Talk to 100 to get an investment. 3. Do your research. Look up the investor before speaking to them. They go into every conversation wanting to say yes.
Career guidance
Knowing what to do next in your career is tough. It's not just about what pays more, what is more prestigious, or what is the best growth opportunity. In my opinion, it's about where you are in your life, what you're looking to learn, what stresses you're ok taking on, then finding a path forward that satisfies all of those (and more) conditions. What do you want for your future? Is the job you have now enabling that? Are you financially stressed? What's the impact of that on your creativity?
Design / UX
Every product is designed, whether it's the toggles in your browser, the chair you're sitting on, or the clothes on your back. Taking a design-first approach to product development isn't for everyone, nor is it easy, but it is important when working to build a delightful product. I spent 7 years as a Product Designer at Google, Meta, and Samsung, refining the ability to take a user-centric approach to product, which has turned me into a deadly, efficient PM.
Mindset coaching
It's easy to find advice on how to manage your GTM, build your MVP, fundraise, or build a team, but it's harder to find someone to give advice on how to navigate the tradeoffs you need to make when deciding those things. In my opinion, it comes down to what you're willing to sacrifice. Everything comes with a cost, and understanding the mindset required for each of those decisions is what makes the decision durable vs painful.
Toolkit
Figma
9 years of experienceVery fluent in Figma from my time as a UX and Product designer. Figma is amazing, and any new team should absolutely become comfortable using it to communicate with either internal or external designers.
Experience
Entrepreneur in Residence, building the Future of Travel with AI, and consulting portfolio companies on the use of AI in their workflows.
Venture Capital
Cofounder of getitAI, an AI ecommerce platform, helping brands 10x their conversion with human-realistic AI Sales Experts
Led a key redesign initiative, bringing the power of LLMs and GenAI to the Samsung ecosystem.
Consumer Electronics
Bringing next-generation language technology to virtual and augmented reality. In 2022, I led the design of the Voice SDK, a partnership between the Assistant and Oculus teams within Meta Reality Labs. I managed our partnerships with more than 20 3P studios, driving experience design within voice-forward and MR-tech enabled use cases. During this time, I managed contracts with external design firms to create video prototypes, vertical slice experiences, and demo videos, and worked to set our overall product direction for a team of engineers. I led a team of 6 designers and acted as a PM for most of this year while we didn't have one. In 2021, I was the Art Director and Manager for our Assistant Experience Incubator, leading a cross-functional team and supporting a team of designers and prototypers creating experiences for the Assistant. A true 0-1 space, it was some of the most fulfilling work I've done in my career, threading the needle between creative vision, user needs, and product market fit, aligning the work to org-level goals.
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Won a 2019 Webby Award for Technical Achievement for Interpreter Mode - Led design for Interpreter Mode on Speakers and Smart Displays - Led design for Google Assistant Alarms and Timers - Led VUI design for Smart Home actions - Designed and launched Assistant Notes and Lists - Designed and launched Assistant Stopwatch - Designed and launched Smart Display VUI Onboarding experience - Designed Pixel device-action troubleshooting dialogues - Designed original Audiobooks VUI experience for Google Assistant - Contributed to Google Assistant Accessibility Framework