Michelle

At 37 weeks pregnant I self-identified a melanoma. A dermatologist told me it wasn't one, but biopsied me anyway for peace of mind. She was wrong. I had surgery at 38 weeks to have it removed. Luckily, that was the end of it. But in the days before surgery, all I could think about was whether I'd be around to get to know my baby.

Three months after Heath was born, I started a data science course. I wanted to build an app to help people monitor their skin and catch melanoma earlier. I couldn't find a co-founder, and LLMs weren't ready, so I shelved it, but I never stopped thinking about it. How could I, with annual skin checks at the melanoma institute.

When Renaud came to me with this problem I knew immediately: I have the perfect skill set to transform scientific discovery. Vision, video, structured data and execution intelligence. Bower has the potential to compress the science that makes melanoma, and a thousand things like it, survivable. That's not a mission I could turn down.

I'm walking away from one of the best jobs in tech, leading AI for Video at Microsoft, with a great team, great pay and interesting problems, because Bower is the most meaningful thing I've ever had the chance to build, with people I care deeply about.

That baby I was so scared I wouldn't get to know is almost five now, and falls asleep every night while I read him animal encyclopaedias. When I think about the world he's inheriting, the climate, the diseases we haven't cured, the species and ecosystems we're losing, I think about how much of that depends on scientists being able to lose less, work smarter and scale faster.

I am a people person, obsessed with building amazing teams and solving important problems. Every product I've built from zero to one started the same way: with a deep understanding of my users and their problems, immersing myself in their behaviours and circumstances, and caring deeply about how to make it better.

I am exceptional at getting things done. I have to be. I'm a mum of two young kids, running a startup, while leading Microsoft's generative video platform with a team of 40. I am insanely motivated. I started my MBA at 25 because I wanted to be promoted faster. I did a data science course on maternity leave with a three month old. I recently took my VP's video strategy apart, built an AI proof of concept showing where we needed to go, and it won him a Microsoft-level award for AI strategy innovation. He is now making a significant angel investment in Bower.

I've reinvented myself repeatedly: from HR, to change management, to product, to strategy, to AI platform lead, now CEO. I've always been motivated to have outsized impact. I excel in ambiguity. I've done zero to one a number of times. I love it, which is why it's a space I thrive in.

Scientists are the most impact-resistant users I've ever encountered. They're resistant for good reasons: historically every tool has asked them to change how they work, to add steps, to trust software with observations that have felt too sacred to digitise. They've been burned before by clunky, user-unfriendly software.

We are going to build something better, because scientists deserve better. They do the most important work in the world, figuring out how to feed people, cure diseases, and understand our planet. And they're losing 20 to 40% of their time to documentation overheads and disparate systems. They're spending years, when it should be weeks, transferring knowledge to new students, employees, team members or commercial labs. This means new therapeutics and diagnostics can take a decade to get to market. I want it to take under 18 months.

The tipping point for scientists is seeing other professions reaping the benefits of AI and wanting the same outcomes, but finding the technology hasn't been built for them. We are going to change that.

Bower is the chance to apply everything I've learned at Microsoft, Dovetail and Google, to the people whose work matters the most.

The thing I'm proudest of in my career isn't the products, it's the teams.

I build teams by caring deeply about the people on them. I hire for diversity and potential and create an environment where people can thrive, somewhere it is safe for them to take accountability and risks, and most importantly deliver something lovable. I fight for my team's growth, their recognition, and their career paths.

I was leading a team of 30+ engineers, analysts, and designers at Macquarie before I turned 30. Not because I was ambitious about titles, but because I was ambitious about building something that mattered, and great people wanted to build it with me. I have been the highest performing product manager at every organisation I've worked at.

That's the kind of company I'm building with Bower. A place where talented people come to do meaningful work with other talented people. A place where we care about each other the way we care about our users.

At Dovetail, I built AI Analysis from scratch for researchers who didn't believe qualitative and quantitative customer data could live in the same product. They didn't just adopt the product, they love it.

At Google, I built Task Mate for gig workers across three countries with no playbook, no infrastructure, no obvious path. I helped women in Mexico access income via OXXO stores because their husbands controlled their bank accounts. I helped map Africa for the German Aerospace Centre. I helped collect long-tail languages and open source them so companies everywhere could build more inclusive products. Impact motivates me.

At Microsoft, I'm building AI tools for creatives who fear what AI means for their future and novices who have never felt creativity was accessible to them.

Each of these required the same thing: genuine care for the people I'm building for, combined with the ability to ship products that actually work in their lives.

I know how to build for resistant users. I know how to build teams that ship. And I've never cared about anything as much as I care about getting this right.