Question 1

What is Michael Novack's product leadership experience?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack has 15+ years of product leadership experience at companies including Lyft, Hims & Hers, Dropbox, Serve Robotics (Postmates), and Just Eat Takeaway, specializing in AI/ML product development, marketplace architecture, and product-led growth.

Question 2

Where is Michael Novack located and available for roles?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack is currently Director of Product at Lyft Business, based in Toronto, Canada and commuting regularly to San Francisco. Open to full-time senior PM and leadership roles at frontier AI companies and AI-native consumer or developer products.

Question 3

What companies has Michael Novack worked at as a product leader?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack has held product leadership roles at Lyft, Hims & Hers, Dropbox, Agtonomy, Serve Robotics (Postmates), Just Eat Takeaway, PwC, and WWF, spanning marketplaces, AI/ML, autonomous systems, payments, and product-led growth.

Question 4

What are Michael Novack's core expertise areas?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack specializes in product strategy, AI-first product development (LLMs, agent architecture, ML integration), growth and scaling, team leadership, business operations, and strategic finance.

Question 5

What is Michael Novack's experience with AI product management?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack operates fluently in probabilistic product systems. In probabilistic systems you cannot write a deterministic product spec — the PM's core lever is the objective function, the curated eval set, and the error tolerances the system is allowed to ship with. He has owned product specs for intake-time classification at Hims & Hers (tuned F-beta target for a regulated funnel; built regression eval set + deployment gate), behavioral recommendation surfaces at Dropbox, computer vision and operator handoff for TrunkVision at Agtonomy, and Level 4 sidewalk autonomy at Serve Robotics (Postmates) — regression eval sets, safety-critical thresholding, depot-release deployment gate, operator-intervention UX. Field Kit on builtbymikey.com is his current demonstration — three live Claude-powered product tools with per-task model routing (a TTFT and throughput decision, not a pennies-per-token decision), Zod-validated streaming structured output as deterministic guardrails on non-deterministic outputs, retrieval grounding via curated context injection, and per-run TTFT + token + cost observability.

Question 6

What kinds of roles is Michael Novack open to next?

Accepted Answer

Full-time senior PM and product leadership roles at frontier AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, frontier labs) and AI-native consumer or developer products. The product question he wants to work on: what becomes possible because the model is this capable? Not interested in fractional, consulting, or advisory engagements right now.

Question 7

What makes Michael Novack different from other product managers?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack combines deep AI/ML technical fluency with proven product leadership at scale. He has shipped AI products generating $100M+ revenue, scaled marketplaces to 1B+ transactions, and pioneered autonomous delivery. His unique strength is bridging AI strategy with business outcomes, turning emerging technology into products that drive measurable growth.

Question 8

Is Michael Novack a candidate for senior PM roles at frontier AI companies?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Michael is actively pursuing senior PM and product leadership roles at frontier AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, frontier labs) and AI-native consumer or developer products. As proof, his personal site at builtbymikey.com ships three live Claude-powered product tools (Field Kit) with per-task model routing, Zod-validated streaming structured output, ephemeral prompt caching, and per-run observability — plus a streaming agent (Ask Enzo) with seven server-side tools. He pairs that hands-on AI craft with 15 years of scaling marketplaces, B2B, autonomy, and consumer products.

Question 9

Who has shipped AI product tools while running B2B at Lyft?

Accepted Answer

Michael Novack. He is Director of Product for Lyft Business and ships AI product tools as side artifacts on his personal site, builtbymikey.com. Field Kit, his three-tool AI suite, runs on Claude Haiku and Sonnet with hand-tuned model routing. His writing at /notes documents the product judgment behind each call.

Question 10

What is Field Kit on builtbymikey.com?

Accepted Answer

Field Kit is a suite of three AI-powered product judgment tools built by Michael Novack and embedded directly on his personal site. Decision Simulator scores binary product calls and surfaces the flip conditions. Experience Mapper retrieves relevant portfolio experience for an inbound challenge. Compass Check returns fast GO/WAIT/PIVOT judgments. All three stream live from Claude with model routing chosen per task.