2022 — 2023
FINRA
Associate Product Manager
End-to-end product work on regulated digital systems: backlog, UAT, documentation, and the kind of stakeholder alignment that only exists when federal rules sit next to the roadmap.
Los Angeles · Founder · Operator
Michael Nkereuwem
I build companies at the seam of healthcare, data, and sport.
Operator, founder, and product person. I have shipped AI products in sports and clinical settings, sold a company, and now partner with independent practices that want to scale without losing the work they were built to do.
The brief
I came up flipping sites and domain names as a kid, ran an eBay shop on government lots, then funded graduate school by turning difficult academic audio into structured research data.
Columbia taught me visualization. FINRA taught me what it means to ship inside a rulebook. The companies I shipped after that — FantasyBall, SmartPractice AI, and all the variations in between — were all versions of the same bet: take messy human signal and make it usable enough to act on.
The through-line is not a single industry. It is operators who already know their craft, and the systems that either get out of their way or bury them.
Ventures
Companies I have built
Sports prediction, clinical AI, research transcription, and now healthcare partnerships.
- 01
Echelon Healthcare Partners
CurrentManaging Partner · 2026 — now
Healthcare partnership work for independent practices and specialized providers. I help founders take chips off the table, clean up administrative drag, and grow without giving up clinical autonomy.
2026 — now
- 02
SmartPractice AI
ClosedFounder · 2024 — 2026
Clinical AI for documentation and practice revenue — medical scribe and ambient workflows for dental, veterinary, and hospice settings. The company reached six figures of revenue in five months, signed multi-site enterprise contracts, and was later sunset.
2024 — 2026
- 03
FantasyBall.io
ExitedFounder · 2023 — 2024
AI sports analytics for fantasy and performance prediction. I took it from concept to a mid-five-figure exit in the first year, with more than a thousand concurrent users and an engine that beat the category accuracy we were measured against.
2023 — 2024
- 04
SpoVis
VentureFounder · Sports analytics
Computer-vision analytics for coaches, athletes, and scouts — built from years on the field watching how much of a player never shows up in a box score.
Sports analytics
- 05
AcademyTranscript
Earlier workFounder · 2018 — 2020
A specialized audio-to-data shop for research institutions, including Columbia. We handled the hard 1% of academic audio and qualitative coding — the work that taught me where speech-to-text still fails, and why structure matters more than raw text.
2018 — 2020
Selected seats
Product, research, and the field
2020 — 2022
Traime Behavioral Health
Clinical Operations
Built and sold an automated patient-tracking system internally, stood up outcome dashboards for leadership, and led adoption of digital assessment tools across the organization.
2018 — 2020
Columbia University
Graduate Research Assistant
Co-author on COVIZ, a socially impactful VR visualization of COVID-19’s effect on New York City. The lesson stuck: most large problems are not missing data. They are missing a way to see it.
About
A dual life in clinics and competition
I work from a dual background in healthcare administration, technology, and competitive athletics. That mix is why I care about both the economics of a practice and the feel of a locker room: people doing hard, specific work, and the infrastructure around them.
After FantasyBall I moved deeper into clinical software — documentation, hospice, veterinary, dental — because the operators I kept meeting were still trapped in tools that stole the hour they needed for care. Echelon Healthcare Partners is the next version of that same conversation, just on the capital side.
If you run a practice, a fund, or a product that has to live inside real workflows, write me.
School
- Columbia UniversityM.S., Emerging Technology, Media & Society2018 — 2022
- Georgia State UniversityBachelor’s degree2018
- Hamilton CollegeUndergraduate study2012 — 2013
- St. Paul’s SchoolConcord, New Hampshire2009 — 2012
Press and research
Publications featured in
Columbia University
Michael Nkereuwem
Profile with the Cogburn Research Group at Columbia School of Social Work.
Hamilton College
Men’s track & field competes at Rensselaer
Hamilton coverage of the 2013 Upstate Classic, including a first-place triple jump.
YouTube
COVIZ: Visualization of Effects of COVID-19 on New York City
The COVIZ project film — socially impactful VR from the Columbia research group.
Indie Hackers
The FantasyBall story, and selling the company
On starting young, funding school with transcription, and shipping an AI sports product from a FinTech product seat.
IEEE VR 2021
COVIZ: Visualization of Effects of COVID-19 on New York City
Immersive public-health visualization with Steven Feiner, Courtney Cogburn, and collaborators at Columbia.
Contact
Write directly
Partnerships, product, and the next company. I read everything that arrives at mikenkereuwem1@gmail.com.