Michael Gao

Michael Gao co-founded Alpaca Health in 2024 to solve a problem he saw every day in autism care: families who had insurance, a diagnosis, and a clear treatment plan were still waiting 6-to-18 months for a BCBA. Alpaca is building the infrastructure to match families with Board Certified Behavior Analysts in their city within days, not months, with a model designed for independent BCBAs running their own caseloads rather than the corporate clinic chains that dominate the space.

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Before Alpaca, Michael founded Dewey Smart — an online education company he started in his freshman-year Columbia dorm, scaled to a team of ~50 Ivy League tutors and counselors with seven-figure revenue, and used to launch Harvi, an AI-powered college counselor. He went on to work in product at Addepar, the wealth management platform used by Morgan Stanley, UBS, and RBC, and at FutureFit AI, a workforce-navigation AI startup.

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On Alpaca Health's blog, Michael writes about the operations and access side of ABA therapy — how insurance coverage works state by state, why waitlists exist and how to get past them, how Alpaca vets its network of independent BCBAs, and what families should expect from intake through assessment. Clinical content on Alpaca's site is reviewed by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst on the advisory team. Michael writes operational content; BCBAs sign off on clinical content.

Alpaca Health is backed by Adverb Ventures, South Park Commons, and Tau Ventures. Michael holds a B.A. in Computer Science and Economics from Columbia University (2022).