Michael Parekh

A Wall Streeter for over 20 years, former partner at Goldman Sachs, and founder of its Internet Research effort in 1994, Michael has been living online since the early days of CompuServe and Prodigy in the '80s and AOL in the '90s. He's a passionate investor in industry disrupting businesses. Michael built the Internet Research effort at the firm, which eventually comprised of many analysts covering major internet segments around the world. Michael was the lead research analyst for the IPOs of Internet companies like UUNET, Yahoo!, eBay, DoubleClick, Exodus, Real Networks, Checkpoint Software, Red Hat, LoudCloud, amongst many other pioneering companies, as well as covering companies like America Online and Netscape. He was an Institutional Investor ranked analyst for the Internet for many years. His focus spanned Internet sectors from software, access, infrastructure, and wireless, to online consumer, commerce and content companies worldwide. Through the nineties, Michael lead the publishing of a wide array of Internet research reports in conjunction with the firm's industry analysts. The focus was on the disruptive influence of the Internet across a wide array of industries. The reports laid out the possible tectonic shifts in the business models of incumbent industries as internet-driven technologies were adopted by consumers and businesses. He joined Goldman Sachs & Co. in 1982, developing the firm's equities business in the Middle East, with high net-worth Family Offices and Sovereign Wealth Funds. In 1989, Michael shifted focus to Institutional Equities Sales at Goldman Sachs in New York, where he launched a pioneering effort providing dedicated Technology Research Sales to buy-side Institutional counter-parts. This initiative became a mainstay Institutional service at many investment banks in the 1990s. In 1994, Michael moved to Equities Research at Goldman Sachs, starting his career as a Technology Research Analyst. A native of India, Michael, aka Mukesh, grew up in the middle east., coming to the US in 1977 for college. He earned his BSc in Finance at Auburn University in 1980, and MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982. After two decades at Goldman Sachs, Michael avidly follows technology and internet trends, actively invests in public and private companies, and serves on advisory boards of various companies, His investment company is MPi Capital, and Incubation company is StikCo Labs. His wife, Jennifer Stewart, i