User:Asaslow/sandbox

Nick Hanauer is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author living in Seattle, Washington. He is one of the co-founders, and current partners, of the venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners and is known for his outspoken view that it is the middle class and not the wealthiest Americans who are the true “job creators.”

Early Life and Career
Hanauer spent the first years of his life in Greenwich Village in New York, NY where his mother worked as a waitress and his father worked low-level jobs on Wall Street and as an editor at a publishing house.

When he was five, Hanauer’s parents moved to the Pacific Northwest to help with the family pillow-making business, Pacific Coast Feather Company. Hanauer attended public school and eventually earned a degree in Philosophy from the University of Washington. Following his graduation, Hanauer worked with his father at Pacific Coast Feather Company, where he continues to serve as co-chair and CEO.

In 1988, while still working at the Pacific Coast Feather Company, Hanauer co-founded Museum Quality Framing, which now operates in over 60 locations.

He also serves as a board member and adviser to Marketleader.com, an online marketing management system for real estate professionals, and Qliance Medical,  a Washington healthcare provider, and is vice chairman of Marchex,  a mobile advertising company.

Venture Funding
In 1995, Hanauer became one of the first non-family investors in Amazon.com, making an initial investment of $45,000. Hanauer served as a Board Advisor of Amazon.com until January of 2000.

Hanauer founded Gear.com in 1998. He served as Chairman of the company for three years until it merged with Overstock.com in 2001.

In 2000, with three of his colleagues, Hanauer founded the venture capital company Second Avenue Partners. The company has funded a number of different startups, including Qliance, FanNation, HouseValues, Ice Energy, Modumetal, and Newsvine. In 2007, FanNation was acquired by Sports Illustrated and NewsVine was acquired by msnbc.com.

In 2007, Microsoft purchased Hanauer’s internet media startup, aQuantive, Inc. (formerly Avenue A Media) for $6.4 billion, the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history.

Author and Proponent of Central Role of Middle Class
Hanauer is an outspoken critic of conventional economic wisdom that he maintains fails to recognize that the nation’s economic growth originates with the middle class. He also argues that U.S. tax policy, by failing to tax the wealthy at high enough rates, undermines economic growth and the sustainability of an American middle class.

In March of 2012 Hanauer gave a TED Talk about his views on taxation and job creation in the U.S. that generated some controversy. Hanauer subsequently appeared as a commentator for several news programs and articles focusing on his contention that the middle class, not the wealthiest Americans, is primarily responsible for job creation.

Hanauer's views on the middle class as job creators have been additionally laid out in two published works, “True Patriot” (2007) and “The Gardens of Democracy” (2011), which he co-authored with Eric Liu.

With the publication of “The True Patriot” in 2007, Hanauer co-founded The True Patriot Network, a non-partisan group committed to furthering patriotic ideals, with Eric Liu.

Philanthropy
Hanauer is active in the Seattle community and Washington’s public education system. He co-founded the Washington State League of Education Voters, a state-wide political organization with a focus on promoting public education.

Hanauer also serves on the boards of several nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, including Cascade Land Conservancy, University of Arizona’s Mt Lemmon Science Center and the Biosphere2, a University of Arizona climate research project.