Michelle Gonzalez is a venture capital investor at M12 who transformed Google's internal incubator Area 120 as Managing Partner, leading a strategic realignment that achieved a record number of projects successfully spinning into core Google products. She has proactively shifted M12 closer to Microsoft's senior leadership while maintaining autonomous investment decision-making, and offers portfolio companies differentiated access to enterprise customers and dedicated AI compute including a supercomputer with GPUs for model training.

• Active engagement with the virtual reality landscape, focusing on both content economics and hardware hurdles like weight or battery life that hinder long-form adoption. She highlights major industry moves, such as Oculus investing heavily in developers, and celebrates wins for creative studios like Baobab.
• Strong ties to the accelerator ecosystem, regularly tracking cohort progress and demo days for major programs like Y Combinator and Alchemist Accelerator. She values the mentorship side of these programs, noting backing from established players like Juniper Networks.
• Attention to emerging business models in media and technology, ranging from decentralized internet structures and smart contracts to the evolution of podcast platforms. She tracks how incumbents like Apple approach original content and how new tech challenges traditional information consumption.
• Advocacy for inclusive team building and diversity within the startup environment. She appreciates analysis on the value of diverse founding teams and participates in community-building events like dinners for women in the VR sector.