Mike Lee is the co-founder and former CEO of MyFitnessPal, the world’s leading nutrition and fitness tracking app that helped millions of people transform their health. Mike grew up in upstate New York, studied economics at Princeton while playing Division I volleyball, and started his career in consulting before making the leap into Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. After stints at startups and tech companies like Beyond.com and Handspring, Mike set out on his entrepreneurial journey, eventually building MyFitnessPal alongside his brother Albert. What started as a simple tool to help him get in shape for his wedding became a global phenomenon at one point used by over 200 million users, eventually acquired by Under Armour for $475 million.
In our conversation, Mike opens up about his unconventional path—from nearly going to medical school, to teaching himself to code again after years away, to bootstrapping MyFitnessPal with just four employees and no outside funding for eight years. He shares what it was like to work side by side with his brother, the challenges of scaling to 30 million users while running lean, and the surprising lessons from resisting VC money until 2013. We also talk about the decision to sell to Under Armour, his experiences navigating corporate life as an Asian American executive, and the deep fulfillment of hearing from users whose lives were changed by the app. This episode is a candid look at the grit, adaptability, and authenticity that powered Mike’s journey—plus what he’s learned about leadership, purpose, and staying true to yourself along the way.
