Michael Deng always felt he had an entrepreneurial spirit.
That instinct — to think strategically, with an eye to the future — is what drew him to Shad in the summer of 2012. The experience was formative, setting him on a path to one of the most prestigious Engineering programs in North America and to the creation of a tech startup now reshaping how cars are bought and sold online.
“For me, Shad was where I was able to take my first stab at entrepreneurship, building something from scratch and spending a summer doing it. I had started doing that a little bit at things like science fairs and some smaller business competitions, but I think it was at Shad that I really made up my mind that I didn’t want to take a traditional career path. I wanted to create something of my own.”
Being surrounded by other highly motivated youths showed Michael the importance of having a good team around you when working towards a meaningful goal. He loved the Design Challenge process of sharing ideas and building off each other’s proposed solutions until they landed on the best option. It laid the foundation for how to take an idea from inception to fruition and continues to inform his current work.
“Working with my project team, occasionally staying up late and throwing around different ideas, made us all feel like the future was so rich and full of potential. There were these incredibly smart kids and together we built this project from nothing, working around constraints and learning to be flexible and pivot. It was really fun and really rewarding.”
Following his time at Shad, Michael applied and was accepted into the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Like Shad, it put him alongside some of the most talented students in his field.
“The big reason I chose that major, and it’s still true now, is that as a kid, I thought studying and building both the hardware skills from electrical engineering, and the software skills on the computer science side, would give me the skills I needed to build things that would be impactful as quickly as possible.”
Upon graduation, Michael got to work learning the ropes at a new and forward-thinking technology company in Silicon Valley. He’d dreamt of one day finding himself at the heart of technological innovation, and now that he was there, he threw himself into the work of building the experience he needed to start the next chapter of his journey.
“Post-college, I started working at this company I really liked called Slack. I had a few options right out of college, but I chose software engineering because it offered the best opportunity to learn a bit more of the technical skills before striking out on my own.”
His time at Slack offered Michael some crucial insights into the growing pains of a technology company. Over the course of four years, the company grew from one that employed hundreds of people to one that employed thousands after being acquired by a larger technology firm. With those skills in hand, Michael was ready to launch his first startup.
“My first startup was called Boost, and it was focused on injury prevention. We developed smart knee sleeves and ankle sleeves that used sensors to measure how you move and help you prevent injuries. For example, it might indicate to the wearer that they’re not warmed up enough, or they’re putting more impact on their right knee than the left knee, so they need to correct their form.”
Michael loved building the prototype, designing how the hardware and software elements of the sleeves would work together to create an optimal user experience. Though his company was successful in attracting early investors, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and cut off its only supply of sensors, which came from Europe and could not be sourced anywhere else.
“Because I couldn’t obtain one of the most important components of the product, we weren’t able to continue with its development, and we had to hit pause. It was really disappointing having to shut things down under those circumstances, but I learned a lot through the process, and it was, nonetheless, a valuable experience.”
Following the closure of Boost, Michael decided to take a role at AngelList, a platform that connects startups with investors, allowing companies to raise capital and investors to invest in early-stage companies. Working from the investor side of the table advanced his knowledge base and his connections in venture capital.
“AngelList essentially gives regular people the opportunity to invest in private startups. Normally, you have to be a very well-connected person or be very wealthy to access those sorts of opportunities, and AngelList kind of democratized that. I was there for about a year and a half, managing a team and leading a couple of products
Eventually, Michael got the startup itch again and needed to venture out on his own. This time it was his childhood passion for cars that inspired his new venture, Hypercars, an end-to-end AI platform for automotive commerce that he hopes will transform the way we buy and sell cars.
“The core of the platform is that we leverage AI across the entire transaction, not just one slice of it. We’ve gathered the current and historical transactions of vehicles that have happened globally, which gives us the best knowledge of car prices for each different car, even down to the minute specifics of each model. One of the major problems in this space is that there is a lack of knowledge about price, which creates trust issues between buyers and sellers. But we’ve gone from being passive — showing you the data — to doing the work directly. We deploy AI agents that go out and source cars, we’ve built a ChatGPT-like interface so you can do deep research on market trends or on one specific car, and we generate the copy and the assets that make a listing actually sell.”
Hypercars has since raised venture capital from institutional investors, and the company is now valued in the millions. Though the future is always unknown, Michael’s past experiences, including his time at Shad, have taught him that good things come to those who put in the work and to have faith in himself to meet any challenges that might come.
“There’s a lot of potential for Hypercars to become the most potent accelerant of the slow-moving automotive industry.”
Building Hypercars has also changed how Michael talks about entrepreneurship. The problem still comes first — he has never doubted that — but he has come to believe the people beside you matter just as much, a conviction that traces back to those late nights with his project team in Halifax.
“Whatever you’re building, if it’s worth building, will eventually be built by someone else if not you. So what remains, besides self-satisfying goals like getting rich and proving yourself? It’s going on an adventure with your friends. These days, through the ups and the downs, I’m endlessly grateful to my co-founder, Kent, for being an amazing friend, a pillar of support, an intellectual sparring partner, and ultimately, a companion on this adventure.”
For Michael, innovation and entrepreneurship were always the same thing, and Shad is where that became clear — as much for who he was building with as for what he built. Identifying problems was only ever the start; the work is building the solutions — for the right people, and with the right people. Fourteen years after that summer in Halifax, he is still working the way he learned to work there: with good people beside him, with the skills he mastered along the way, convinced the future is rich and full of potential.