Mike Willems is a multidisciplinary engineer building software with the Frankly team within the Applied Social Media Lab, where he is a new addition as of 2026.

After earning an engineering degree on the east coast, Mike has worked in San Francisco Bay Area tech startups for over a decade as an engineer, consultant, diligence investigator, venture partner, and founder, raising more than $6M in funding across CEO and CTO roles. He prides himself on his habit of applying extremely broad experience to solve difficult or obscure engineering and business problems with unrealistic financial and time constraints.

Mike loves working with his awesome Frankly teammates and meeting a few of his personal heroes in Larry Lessig and Bruce Schnier, Mike is excited to continue to identify and implement rapid improvements for the tool anticipating its open beta launch!

Outside of Frankly, Mike is obsessed with protecting personal privacy and liberties, especially for vulnerable populations. He is developing a comprehensive threat modeling and personal operational security framework and accompanying open knowledge base.