Michael Villar is the Founder and CEO of Height, a New York-based company specializing in AI-driven project management and collaboration tools. Height functions as a flexible, all-in-one project management platform that integrates artificial intelligence at its core to automate and autonomously handle routine project management tasks. This includes triaging bugs, updating statuses, organizing backlogs, and managing standups, enabling teams to focus more on impactful product development rather than manual task upkeep.
Professional Background
Prior to founding Height, Michael Villar was an early product designer and full-stack engineer at Stripe, where he contributed significantly to foundational products such as Stripe Checkout, the Stripe iPhone app, and Stripe Atlas. His experience at Stripe provided deep insight into scalable business operations and technology-driven product development, directly informing his strategic approach at Height. Before Stripe, Villar co-founded Kickoff, a productivity startup acquired by Stripe in 2013, marking his early success as an entrepreneur focused on productivity and collaboration technologies.
Leadership and Company Strategy
Under Villar’s leadership, Height has grown to a global team of approximately 20 employees, focusing on building next-generation work tools centered on automation and AI. Villar has articulated a vision to remove the manual, tedious elements from project management by embedding an AI reasoning engine that handles micro-decisions and operational upkeep autonomously rather than merely simplifying them. This strategy positions Height not merely as a project management software provider, but as a pioneer in autonomous project collaboration technology.
Villar emphasizes the importance of design sensibility in B2B work tools, aligning Height in the evolving market alongside companies like Slack, GitHub, and Figma. His focus is on creating intuitive, automated workflows that reduce the cognitive load on users and improve overall workplace productivity.
Product Evolution and Market Position
Height initially launched as a collaborative project management tool aimed at breaking down silos across company teams. Beginning in 2023, Height integrated AI features branded as "Copilot" to automate routine project tasks such as automated standup meetings, chat summarization, and status catch-ups. Following comprehensive user research, Height pivoted to developing a fully autonomous project management tool, with AI embedded deeply into every facet of project workflows.
This autonomous approach seeks to shift the paradigm from task management as a manual job to task management as an automated service, allowing users to "offload the drudgery" of upkeep and focus on the core productive work that drives customer value. Height’s AI-powered automation includes functionalities such as bug triaging and backlog updating “on autopilot,” which Villar highlights as key differentiators in the competitive project management space.
Company Funding and Financial Context
Height secured $14 million in funding as of October 2021, aimed at expanding its scalable project management platform with adaptable workflows, tasks, and chat functionalities enhanced by AI capabilities.
Current Developments and Strategic Shifts
In 2025, Height announced it will shut down operations on September 24, 2025, after approximately 3.5 years of public availability. This decision reflects the challenging dynamics in the project management software market despite Height’s innovative AI integrations and autonomous ambitions. Throughout its operation, the company demonstrated the ability to automatically identify and assign owners for software regressions and other technical issues, showcasing advanced AI orchestration within engineering workflows.
Personal Background and Entrepreneurial Drive
Michael Villar grew up in a small village in Belgium and developed an early fascination with technology and startups, participating in digital product sales and software development as a teenager. His global perspective—encompassing European roots, U.S. startup experience, and Silicon Valley product engineering—underpins his current leadership approach at Height. Villar’s trajectory demonstrates a consistent commitment to building productivity tools that streamline workflows and bring a consumer-grade design philosophy to business software.
Key Data Points:
- Role: Founder & CEO, Height
- Location: New York, USA
- Previous Experience: Early product designer and full-stack engineer at Stripe; Co-founder of Kickoff (acquired by Stripe)
- Company Size: ~20 employees
- Funding Raised: $14 million (as of 2021)
- Core Product: AI-autonomous project management platform integrating chat, task management, and adaptive workflows
- Strategic Focus: Automating project management legwork via embedded AI reasoning engines; reducing manual task upkeep
- Recent Developments: Height shutting down September 24, 2025
- Professional Network: 500+ LinkedIn connections
This profile situates Michael Villar as a technically adept founder and executive with a strong product orientation towards AI-enabled automation, with experience scaling startups within competitive fintech and productivity software sectors. The impending closure of Height indicates transitional challenges in the AI-project management domain despite positive early investment and product innovation.
