Michael.VanderValk
Senior Product Leader · People & Agents

Lead. Build. Ship.

Leading teams — human and AI — that build great products.

The next generation of product leadership means directing teams of people and teams of agents toward the same outcome. I've spent my career building both — scaling AI, data, and analytics platforms at Amazon, leading product and UX transformation at Deloitte, and earning an NYU Tech MBA to bridge technical systems and business outcomes. Now I build in public: shipping tools, directing agent teams, and documenting what actually works.

Michael VanderValk

Headshot generated with StudioAI Photos — an app I built.

Deloitte
12 years leading product and UX transformation — rebuilding the Audit business for the digital age
12 years
NYU Stern
Tech MBA — bridging business strategy and technical systems
1 year
Amazon
Led AI & data platform initiatives at scale across multiple organizations
4 years
Now
Shipping apps, directing agent teams, building in public
4 apps live · 5 agents deployed
6+
Builder Tools Used
Live
PM Interview Coach
Voice-enabled drill app for senior PM interview prep. Seven structured drills targeting specific sub-skills — ecosystem mapping, prioritization, root cause analysis — with AI-scored reps benchmarked to L4/L5/L6 levels.
Live
StudioAI Photos
Turns casual selfies into professional LinkedIn headshots using Gemini image generation. Upload up to 5 reference photos, pick attire and background style, download a studio-quality result. Built in an afternoon — because the alternatives cost $40.
In Motion
Momentum
AI-powered patient intake for physical therapy. Patients organize their clinical story before the visit — Momentum synthesizes it into a structured brief that's ready before the provider walks in. Designed for clinics and health systems rethinking the full patient journey.
Live
AI Personal Operating System
A CLI-driven agent stack running inside Obsidian. Processes daily notes overnight — extracting tasks, routing them to the right projects, scoring priorities, and generating weekly reflections. Running daily since late 2025.
In Motion
HH Payroll
Full-stack household payroll app. Handles gross pay, tax withholding, PTO accrual, versioned pay statements, and payment tracking — built to replace a spreadsheet with something actually auditable.
In Motion
unFlakeable
AI agent that wrangles your friend group into committing to a plan — through a live War Room feed with a selectable agent personality. Drill sergeant, hype man, chaos agent — pick your poison.
// Up Next What I'm building toward
Career
BestSelf.ai
Structured AI interview that helps you articulate who you are at your best — for job apps, interviews, or personal clarity.
AI Infra
Agent Workflow Builder
Visual tool for designing multi-agent product workflows. Miro meets LangGraph — for PMs, not engineers.
Productivity
PM Standup Agent
Pulls context from Jira, Slack, and docs to auto-draft your daily standup. Saves 10 minutes, keeps it honest.

These are the agents running in my personal operating system — real, deployed, and processing my work daily. Each one has a defined job, runs on a schedule or trigger, and outputs something I actually use. This is what "leading agents" looks like in practice.

Personal Operating System Daily Systems
Claude Code · bash · git
Daily Note Processor
Extracts tasks and ideas from freeform daily captures, routes them to the right project or area file, and classifies each as Action (⚡) vs Motion (🔄).
Claude · priority model
Priority Scorer
Ranks all open tasks 0–100 using a multi-factor model: due date, blocking status, manual urgency flags, and goal alignment boost.
Claude · weekly context
Weekly Review Agent
Synthesizes 7 days of daily notes into a structured reflection: task counts by category, Action:Motion ratio, productivity patterns, and next-week recommendations.
Claude · web search · resume
Interview Prep Builder
Combines web-fetched company research, a STAR story bank, and your resume to generate a tailored brief for any interview type in minutes.
Claude · semantic matching
Duplicate Detector
Prevents redundant notes before filing — title matching → keyword search → semantic similarity at 85%+ confidence before anything new is created.
01
Treat Your AI Like an Employee — Because That's What It Is
The intern → junior → senior framework for calibrating how much direction AI needs at each stage of your working relationship.
02
How I Use Obsidian to Give AI Perfect Context
The system that helped another PM ace an HM interview round. Simple to set up, permanently changes how you work with AI.
// Builder Stack Tools I ship with
Claude Code
Agentic coding · full-stack
Cursor
IDE · AI pair programming
Google AI Studio
Prototyping · multimodal AI
Anthropic API
Claude · production AI
Supabase
Realtime · auth · database
Vercel
Deployment · edge functions
Codex
Code generation · CLI agent
// Get in touch

Let's talk product.