Michael studied Computer Science at TU Munich and UC Santa Barbara. The dot-com bubble caused him not to finish his Ph.D., but he has come to terms with that by now.

He worked for Google since the days when it was a real start-up. He has been one of three engineers who moved from Mountain View to start the Zurich engineering office, which is now the largest Google engineering office outside the U.S. Some of his roles were Lead Engineer for Google Groups (Mountain View), Lead Engineer for Google News (Mountain View) and Engineering Director for Google Maps (Zurich).

When Michael finally realized that Google is no longer a start-up, he resigned and became an angel investor.