Michael Segal

CEO

2014 - Current

I am co-founder of Skylight, a smart home startup that creates products used by millions of families around the world, including Skylight Frame and Skylight Calendar.

Vice President

2015 - 2018

As a Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners, I invested and worked with early stage technology companies, serving as Board Observer at Periscope Data, NPM, Zirx, Hightower (now VTS), and Sweet Labs. The deals that I championed at Bessemer all revolved around solving high-impact problems for real people: Guild Education creates a corporate education benefit that allows socioeconomically disadvantaged people to get their college degrees, Groups helps people with opioid addiction get access to affordable treatment, Lingokids helps international kids learn English affordably, and Periscope Data is helping usher in the data-driven enterprise.

Product Manager

2014 - 2014

As part of the product team at Spotify, I helped to direct product strategy and implementation for Spotify’s front-end radio & music discovery products, which have over 10m monthly active users across web, Android and iOS. I worked to define and implement UX, content & technical implementation strategies for: - A significant UX redesign of radio. Launched product to 500K+ users and analyzed results - A new music discovery product that will launch in 2015 - New personalization features I also helped to manage the daily workflow for a team of 8 engineers (iOS, Android, web & QA). Overall, I worked with eight teams (front-end, backend & machine learning) to launch complex & interdependent features.

Founder and CEO

2012 - 2013

I founded the online discovery shopping site Curio Road, which helped people discover the superstars of artisan and handmade design, i.e. the top stars of Etsy and similar platforms. We raised seed capital from top New York angel investors, including Fabrice Grinda, Jason Finger, Gary Vaynerchuk, and others. I directed our 6-person engineering and design teams in the launch and ongoing iterative development of our product. I also recruited our Chief Merchandising Officer who was responsible for running our vendor outreach & onboarding team. We sold $60K+ of merchandise, and grew our user base to 50,000+ visitors and 10,000+ members.

Venture Capital Analyst

2009 - 2011

At Bessemer, I discovered and evaluated investment opportunities in sectors including SaaS, healthcare, mobile & online retail. I identified and helped execute investments totaling $28m of deployed capital: - $10m investment in online video marketplace Adap.tv (acq by AOL for $400m+ in 2013) - $8m investment in social software company Involver (acq by Oracle in 2012) - $10m investment in Russian e-commerce company KupiVIP I also organized and helped lead Bessemer’s 2011 Analyst recruiting effort, interviewing 100+ candidates.

VP, Business Development

2008 - 2009

Co-founder of online venture that provided social networking and grant administration software to universities. I managed our engineering team in completion of core product functionality and ongoing new feature releases. I also directed sales, implementation, & support efforts of software at 50+ schools, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton. We were acquired by the Kauffman Foundation in 2009, where the service is now called iStart.org.

Founder and Co-President

2006 - 2008

At Harvard College, I co-founded and drove the strategic vision of the primary entrepreneurship student organization on campus. We awarded nearly $100K in grants & services to young entrepreneurs, and hosted 1K+ attendees at our 50+ events. We were a founding organizer of the I^3 Innovation Challenge, which today is Harvard College’s premier business plan competition.

Biochemistry Researcher

2006 - 2007