Michael was born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa, where he met his first love in school: technology and building low-level expert systems. Inspired to learn more, Michael moved to the Netherlands to study computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Next, he jumped on the ‘hype train’ and did a graduate program in Artificial Intelligence at Utrecht University.

While shopping for clothes online, he had the experience of never seeing someone like himself, as many of us do. As a result he founded his company, Amsterdam-based Lalaland.

Lalaland is built on two main pillars: social empowerment and sustainable impact. First, Lalaland empowers brands and consumers to pluralize the beauty standard by making the web as diverse as the market they serve. Lalaland uses generative AI to create diverse photorealistic yet nonexistent fashion models and eliminates the need for physical photoshoots. Second, Lalaland combats landfill waste by reducing the number of physical samples needed during the design- and merchandising process, as well as by reducing return rates.