Authority Magazine
“Discovering Your Life’s Purpose: Michael Yang On How to Align Your Goals with Your True Self”
March 26, 2026
An interview with Dr. Bharat Sangani
“I realized that my calling is to inspire others through my adventures and stories to step out of their comfort zones and challenge themselves through experiences that involve fear.”
Finding and living in alignment with your true purpose can be a transformative journey. Yet, many struggle with identifying their life’s purpose and aligning their goals with it. In this series, we aim to explore how individuals discover their purpose and create a life that reflects their authentic selves, leading to greater fulfillment and success.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Yang.
Michael Yang is an entrepreneur, adventurer, and writer. He was born and raised in Seoul, Korea, and moved to San Jose, California, at age 14. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science and a master’s degree in business administration from UC Berkeley and with a master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University in New York. He is the founder of mySimon.com, a pioneering online price comparison site that was successfully acquired by CNET. Michael holds a fourth-degree black belt in Taekwondo and enjoys taking adventure motorcycle trips around Southern California and the world whenever the opportunity arises. He and his wife, Sunny, have four children and a Maltipoo dog named Daisy. He lives in La Canada Flintridge, California.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, in 1961. My family and I immigrated to the USA in 1976 with no money and settled in San Jose, California, when I was 14. I didn’t speak any English, and I was an out-of-place teenager in a new country. I had to learn the new language and culture and adapt to a new environment. After studying electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and Columbia University, I worked in Silicon Valley’s tech industry for 15 years before I started my own dotcom startup, mySimon.com, in 1998, when the Internet was taking off. It was acquired by CNET for $700 million in 2000 during the first Internet boom…
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