Matt Michelsen

Matt Michelsen is an energetic entrepreneur who has built multiple great companies in finance, retail, and media. Matt is at the forefront of Lady Gaga’s social media endeavors as CEO & Founder of The Backplane, which powers Lady Gaga's social media community (www.littlemonsters.com). The Backplane is a disruptive tech company redefining community online and offline, making it easy to join, discover, share and collaborate with people around your favorite interests.

As the founder and principal of Embarcadero Securities, Matt built a client base of over 250 hedge funds and played an instrumental role in developing all aspects of Embarcadero's services, becoming one of the most connected people in US finance.

He also founded UNX, which provides advanced electronic trading technology solutions to buy-side institutions and broker-dealers through its open architecture platform, Catalyst® Portal.

Matt is Chairman of Gunnar Optiks, which Carl Zeiss has made a strategic investment.

Matt was previously an Airborne Ranger in the U.S. Army, and received a B.S. from the University of Rhode Island.