Michael Skok

Michael Skok is a British-born, Boston-based entrepreneur-turned-investor who spent roughly 21 years as a software founder and CEO before moving into venture capital. By his own account he started his first software business as a teenager, programming the HP-65 — one of the world's first programmable calculators — and later co-founded Skok Systems (a pioneering desktop CAD system licensed by Hewlett-Packard) with his brother. He went on to found European Software Publishing, which helped U.S. software firms enter European markets and built Symantec's UK operation into one of its most profitable international businesses, and co-founded AlphaBlox, an early real-time analytics company for Fortune 1000 enterprises that was acquired by IBM in 2001.

Skok began his venture career as a General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners around 2002, where he focused on seed-to-growth financing and coined the "Everything as a Service" investment thesis, anticipating the industry's shift to the cloud years before it became mainstream. During his North Bridge tenure he led or backed a string of category-defining companies, including Acquia (commercializing the open-source Drupal project), Demandware (acquired by Salesforce for $2.8B), and Revolution Analytics (acquired by Microsoft).

In 2015 he co-founded Underscore VC in Boston alongside John Pearce and Richard Dulude, building the firm around a "community"/open-source investing model in which a broad network of Core Partners provides non-dilutive support to portfolio companies. Following a brain tumor diagnosis in 2019, Skok stepped back from active management of the firm and now serves as Founding Partner Emeritus, remaining a trusted resource to the Underscore team and its founders.

Skok is deeply involved with Harvard, where he is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School (and a former Entrepreneur-in-Residence). He is widely known for his "Startup Secrets" education series produced with the Harvard Innovation Labs, which has drawn millions of views, and he has contributed to building Harvard's Foundry program.

• Invests at pre-seed and seed in B2B software founders, roughly split between vertical SaaS and fintech/emerging technology.
• Backs "breakthrough technologies and disruptive business models" — historically open source, SaaS, cloud, and mobile; more recently AI/machine learning, IoT, and adjacent frontier tech.
• Famous for the "Everything as a Service" thesis (2002), betting early on major platform shifts before consensus forms.
• Philosophy centers on helping founders "create enduring companies through the power of community" — Underscore's differentiator is mobilizing a large network of expert Core Partners around each company.
• Looks for large, market-changing opportunities and exceptional entrepreneurial talent positioned ahead of a technology megatrend.