Holstee
Back at the company I co-founded, part-time on AI-driven special projects. Taking manual work off a lean team so they can focus on growth.
Michael Radparvar
Founder & Operator
Building at the intersection of AI and mission-driven companies.
Recent work
Vibe Check
A 60-second market analysis for any startup idea — competitive landscape, saturation, and a build-ready prompt. I built it because I kept running the same research loop on my own ideas and wanted to compress it.
ARC — "The Engine of AI"
A self-initiated positioning teardown: how a modular nuclear company stops selling clean electrons and starts selling clean uptime for AI data centers. (A repositioning exercise — not a company I run.)
Reflection.app
A digital journal I co-founded in 2018, built around the practice of weekly self-inquiry. 700,000+ entries written by users to date.
Recent writing
All posts →May 18, 2026
Runway Week 2: Underneath
Kim's 14-year KPI sheet started filling itself in, QuickBooks came off manual export, and Google's AI Overview showed up in the search numbers.
May 11, 2026
Runway Week 1: Calibrate
Two refreshes shipped, the April health report ran, and the Pinterest API saga ended in a clean decision.
May 5, 2026
Runway Week 0: Setting up
The weekend the Sprint Plan came together, the 14 decisions that fell out, and the first refresh shipped via API.
About
Started young — at twelve, my brother and I built a small business selling underpriced Beanie Babies on eBay; in college I launched QUBooks, a textbook marketplace adopted by roughly half the student body. After graduating in 2005 I joined AchieveGlobal in New York doing sales and leadership development.
In 2008 I co-founded Holstee. What started as a t-shirt company became a mindfulness community after the Holstee Manifesto went viral in 2011 — translated into 12 languages, called “The New Just Do It” by The Washington Post. We grew Holstee Membership to 700+ members across 60+ countries, with institutional partners including Johnson & Johnson, UC Berkeley, and Grateful.org. Along the way I helped build Simple Apps, acquired in 2013.
In 2018 I co-founded Reflection.app, a digital journal built around weekly self-inquiry — 700,000+ entries written by users to date.
I stepped back from Holstee operations in 2025. Most recently I consulted for a home services firm, building permit-based outreach that lifted bid volume 35% and win rates 20%.
The through-line: building things people come back to, with small teams, where the product and the community shape each other.
How I work
I help businesses figure out what they’re doing by hand that they don’t need to. Recurring reports, disconnected data sources, manual handoffs between tools — the operational layer that most teams never get around to fixing.
Right now my focus is e-commerce, real estate, and home services.
If that sounds like where you are, drop me a line or grab time.