The story of Mikey Anderson
A Childhood Inside the Computer Revolution
Mikey Anderson grew up in a close extended family where eight cousins could meet at the same bus stop. Technology and entrepreneurship were ordinary parts of home life. His father moved from teaching into an evangelist role at Apple, and his uncle also worked there. As a small child, Mikey appeared onstage during demonstrations that showed people what computers could make possible.
Employees later invited him to build games and animation with early software tools. That exposure gave him both confidence and an unusually direct relationship with emerging technology. It also established a pattern that would follow him into adulthood: map how a system works, gather talented collaborators, and build something that expands individual agency rather than asking people to fit passively into someone else's structure.
Losing and Reclaiming Personal Agency
The freedom of Mikey's early years did not protect him from uncertainty. As a teenager, an anxiety episode at a friend's house was interpreted through a frightening religious framework, and he spent years trying to feel safe inside that story. Later, he described the harder work of separating community and friendship from beliefs that told him he lacked agency. Professionally, he also accepted the instability that comes with founding companies, including periods without predictable pay and the pressure of repeated risk.
Those experiences sharpened his objection to systems that create dependence through fear or opacity. They also made identity a practical design concern for him. His later work asks whether people can remain authors of their own decisions when software, institutions, and increasingly capable AI systems mediate more of everyday life.
Building AI That Belongs to Its User
At Think, Mikey and longtime collaborators are developing personal AI agents designed around user ownership and interoperability. He connects the work to earlier experience building and deploying AI, where he saw powerful models become embedded in institutions and products without giving ordinary users meaningful control. Think's approach uses open tools and onchain identity so an agent can authenticate with a person's services while keeping the relationship centered on that person. In the interview, Mikey said early users were nearing the point of reserving agents, with product work accelerating around new standards that let tools communicate.
He also described related experiments in persistent digital identities. The broader goal is not simply another assistant. It is an alternative to AI products that profile users inside closed systems and turn personal intelligence into a platform asset.