Nick Hanauer
Nicolas J Hanauer began his professional career at Pacific Coast Feather Company as the company's executive VP of Sales and Marketing. In that role, Nick helped grow Pacific Coast from several million dollars in sales to more than 300 million. Hanauer remains as the company’s Co-Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer.
In 1988, while still an executive with Pacific Coast, Hanauer co-founded Museum Quality Framing Company. Today that company has 60 stores and is the largest of its kind on the west coast. Hanauer became the first non-family investor in Amazon.com in 1995 where he served as a Board Advisor for the company until January of 2000. In 1996, he founded and served as CEO of internet media company Avenue A Media; later re-named aQuantive, Inc. and became Chairman of the board when the company went public in February of 2000. aQuantive was purchased by Microsoft in August of 2007 for 6.4 billion dollars; the largest acquisition in Microsoft history. In 1998, Hanauer founded Gear.com and served as Chairman of the company for three years until it merged with Overstock.com in 2001. In the year 2000, he partnered with three colleagues to create the Seattle-based venture capital company, Second Avenue Partners, a provider of management, strategy, and capital for early stage companies such as HouseValues.com, Ice Energy, Insitu Group, Modumetal and Newsvine. Hanauer serves as a Board Member and Advisor to House Values.com, Insitu Group, and Newsvine.
Today, Hanauer is actively involved in the Seattle community and Washington State’s public education system. In 2000, he co-founded the League of Education Voters (LEV); a non-partisan statewide political organization focused on promoting public education. He currently serves as Co-President of the LEV. Additionally, Hanauer serves on the boards of the Cascade Land Conservancy, The University of Washington Foundation, The Seattle Alliance for Education, The University of Arizona’s Mt Lemmon Science Center and the Biosphere2; a University of Arizona climate research project.
In 2007, Hanauer published the book “The True Patriot” with co-author Eric Liu. The book , currently going into its second printing, asks the question as it relates to today’s politics, “What do you believe and why?”
Nick Hanauer grew up in the Seattle area, attended public schools and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from the University of Washington in 1981. He has traveled extensively overseas visiting more than 60 countries in the course of two plus years of adventuring. Nick enjoys fly-fishing and is an avid amateur astronomer. He and his wife, Leslie, reside in the Seattle area with their two children.