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Michael Suen
Founder and Principal, Weirdo
I’m the founder and principal of Weirdo, a digital brand and product studio helping early-stage ventures cultivate thriving communities on the internet. With over a decade of experience as an independent designer and strategist, I work directly alongside founding teams to clarify their brand identity, derisk their unique value proposition, and meaningfully engage their first customers.
I also teach design at Noble Desktop, ranked the #1 best UI/UX bootcamp by Fortune magazine in 2024. Until recently, I was an adjunct professor at the City University of New York, where I co-created and taught the curriculum for their user experience workforce training program.
In my former lives, I covered arts and culture as a journalist, shipped award-winning museum exhibits and educational games as a content producer, and built a successful online education marketplace as a startup co-founder. Today, SwitchUp is a leading authority on the technology bootcamp space, with over 38,500 verified student reviews. The company was acquired in 2018 by Optimal.
Raised in Hong Kong and educated in Vermont, I now live in Queens, NY with my one partner, two cats, and five video game consoles.
Let's chat: https://cal.com/msuen
Highlights
2024 marks a decade of running a solo creative services business. For anyone looking from the outside in, it might sound like a quintessential freelancer success story.
But the more time passes, the more I’m convinced this was never a business I could build by myself. Many of us chase purpose through our work, and Weirdo has undeniably provided me the vehicle to do that alongside so many others.
Independent creatives may be lone, but they don’t have to be alone.
Yesterday, I turned 35. As I hurtle toward 40, it’s only right I indulge a mid-life crisis on the internet and reflect on what I’ve learned over the past decade of running an independent creative services business:
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Work at your own pace. In a world that prioritizes rapid speed, growth can be difficult to see.
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Discomfort can be healthy. Interrogate what you're avoiding. You'll be surprised by what you discover.
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Subtract and simplify. It's easy to mistake complexity for quality, and busyness for progress.
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Have the courage to ask for help. Your success is your collaborators' success, and vice versa.
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Ask the stupid questions. Becoming more knowledgable is better than looking knowlegable.
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Prioritize safety. None of the above is easy without the space to be vulnerable and feel heard.
