Nick Hanauer is a successful business leader, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Hanauer has founded, co-founded, or invested in dozens of companies. He was the first non-family investor in Amazon.com, and a company he founded, aQuantive, later sold to Microsoft for 6.4 billion dollars.

In recent years, Hanauer has established himself as a civic innovator, public speaker, and fierce critic of America’s growing income inequality. He is the founder of Civic Ventures, a public policy incubator in Seattle devoted to catalyzing significant social change, and the co-author of two bestselling books—The True Patriot and Gardens of Democracy. His policy pieces for outlets including Politico, Bloomberg News, and TED have gone viral, reaching audiences of tens of millions.