Michael was a Senior Lecturer and Faculty member at the Wharton School for more than 20 years. He began his teaching career at the Wharton School as a teaching assistant, became a Senior Lecturer and moved to teaching in the Undergraduate, Graduate and Executive MBA programs. Afterwards Michael was a Faculty member for numerous Senior Executive Education courses, including the Wharton Executive Development program which was based upon a simulation model of a global high technology ecosystem that he developed. Michael was also involved in the Wharton ebusiness Fellows program, teaching simulation models of internet ecommerce. For the past six years, he has supervised various student projects related to early stage companies and venture capital, advised and mentored student entrepreneurs, judged business plans, advised students participating in a year long consulting assignments for Israeli technology companies, has been a guest lecturer on ebusiness marketing in classes on advanced marketing strategy and h as taught private equity investing in corporate finance classes.
Michael is also a founder and investor in five successful software companies, four of whom have been acquired, and an active investor in several additional companies that have been acquired or went public. Michael's first software company, started while in undergrad at Wharton, was acquired four years later. He then co-founded Strategic Management Group, Inc, in 1981, a developer of computer simulations for corporate learning and planning, which was three times named to the INC Magazine list of the 500 fastest growing companies in the United States and grew to $28 million in revenues and 400 employees with a total equity investment of less than $50,000. Here he served as Executive Vice President responsible for International Business Development and Managing Director of Internet Strategy and eBusiness. Here he worked closely with senior executives from Accenture, IBM, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Rockwell and Sun Microsystems. Additionally, Michael was Chief Financial and Legal Officer for 15 years, handling a wide variety of matters including multi-year forecasting and analysis, financial and tax reporting, executive and sales compensation, stock options, patents and trademarks, international software distribution agreements, key customer contracts and complex Federal litigation. Michael sold his controlling interest in a $100 million leveraged re-capitalization in July of 2000 and left the company in 2002.
In 1986, Michael co-founded Reality Technologies, a provider of personal financial software, with two of his students from Wharton, serving as Chairman of the Executive Committee until he sold his ownership interest in 1989 to SEI Corporation (NYSE SEIC) for a 66x return. He continued to remain involved until the company was acquired by Reuters in 1993.
Michael has been one of first investors in VINtek, a provider of software, data and Egovernment services to automotive lenders; Intermedia Interactive, a provider of PC, CDROM and Internet based educational and business content and interactive games; Home Financial Network, a provider of software tools for internet banking; Docent, a corporate knowledge management software company. All of these companies were acquired and have been very successful.
Michael received his Bachelor in Science in Economics with Honor from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Entrepreneurial Management and Multinational Enterprise.
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