Michael Malone is a Founder & CEO at Smallstep at Smallstep. Colleagues describe him as "Mike Malone is hands down one of the best engineers I've ever worked with. The groundbreaking, patent-pending distributed database technology he managed to build at SimpleGeo was our prized possession. When you couple this with an outgoing, charismatic leader who just happens to have a business degree, you can see what makes Mike such a special person. In the future, Mike won't be known for being the bright, intellectually curious coder he is today, but rather a technical founder of his own venture-backed startup. Make no mistake, Mike is legitimately the real deal. I can only hope Mike gives me the opportunity to work with him again.", "Mike is one of those rare engineers who is simultaneously a brainy academic who can quote the literature and a pragmatic hands-on implementor who can get the project done. His approach to design, performance, and diagnosing issues is scientific; he has mastered the art of gathering metrics and driving action with evidence. He has a keen business sense which keeps his efforts down-to-earth, but he knows when to stand up for doing it "right" versus doing it "right now". Most of all, Mike is a pleasure to work with. He has a great sense of humor, he's an articulate speaker, and he has a talent for defusing tension that make him a particular asset to a team of opinionated technical professionals.", and "Mike is one of the best developers I have ever worked with. His ability to research and learn new technologies has helped Pownce both add new features quickly and improve performance and scalability. When Pownce ran into some performance issues, Mike was able to analyze the problem, debate possible solutions and implement caching and database improvements. Mike is also the sole developer of our iPhone application. He has been able to finish new iPhone features amazingly fast, making Pownce able to launch an iPhone application in the initial app store."