Meet The Team
MICHAEL CHEUNG
Michael Cheung is currently the Head of Software at Vave Health, leading its mobile, web, cloud, data and AI disciplines. Prior to that, he was the VP of Engineering at Eargo. There, he built their mobile, web and cloud engineering teams from the ground up, and oversaw all eCommerce and software development until their recent IPO last October. Before moving into leadership, Michael spent many years as a software engineer. His diverse expertise includes building the data infrastructure at Omada Health, increasing the scalability of the cloud platform at Box, and modernizing web architectures at both PopSugar and Gilt Groupe.
Prior to joining startups, Michael tenured at IBM as a software specialist. He consulted on numerous clients, including Nike, Jive, St. Jude Medical and Air Canada, specializing on cloud application development. He also spent time at MDA, a Canadian space technology company, where he did research on geointelligence and predictive analytics for applications in the farming industry.
He began his career as a web developer with the National Research Council of Canada, where he worked on establishing and instituting web accessibility standards.
Managing in a hypergrowth startup
In my decade-long startup journey, I have had the privilege to participate in six different startups thus far. Of the six, two have gone IPO, two more have been acquired, while the remaining two are still active and growing privately. Of the four that have successfully exited, I personally witnessed the company experience hypergrowth - a phase in which the company experiences rapid expansion in operations, revenue and subsequently expectations.
Working in a startup environment is as unique and challenging an experience as it is rewarding. As part of that challenge, the ability for leadership to successfully enable hypergrowth for a company is key to its future success and potential. I want to share my personal experiences managing in such an environment as a software leader - the key challenges that come with such responsibilities along with my own takeaways on navigating this expedition. Combined with a touch of luck, you could be on the verge of creating the next unicorn.
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