Me
I am Mike Wakerly and this is my internet home. I go by mikey if we’re just using one name, because there are often plenty of other mikes around. I’m envious of people with unique and uncommon names.
I am an engineer primarily because I love building things!
- In the 90s, I built a ton of crappy web apps; the primordial days of the web. All of them are now thankfully dead.
- In the 2000s, I was a founding engineer on, and then shipped several generations of, Google’s massive cluster networking fabric. A lot of what we invented is now termed software-defined networking.
- In the 2010s, I founded and led the engineering team at a venture-backed startup, Button. We built some incredible technology and product, but I’m proudest of my role in building the company, team, and culture.
- I built and scaled a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS business.
I am currently a principal at The General Partnership, an awesomely unique VC firm. I work with our portfolio companies & founders on matters of technical scale, product design, hiring, non-technical challenges, and really anything else. I love this stuff!
What else am I up to? Hopefully that’s what the blog is about. I’ve found that building teams is just as exciting and challenging as building technology, so I like to write about both.
This domain
hoho.com has been my internet home since 1996.
Why hoho? Why not. I was a teenager; the internet was young, bright, and fun; and the name was available. Sorry, it’s not for sale.
Contact
You can find me on LinkedIn and BlueSky, if you like.
Updated July 2025