Mick Hagen

Mick Hagen is the founder and CEO of Hifi Finance and Hightop. He's also a budding angel investor, having made several investments in startups like MyCrypto and others in recent years. Mick is an entrepreneur, investor and advisor in the startup ecosystem. After dropping out of Princeton University (computer science), Mick founded Zinch, an ed-tech company connecting students globally with opportunities in higher education. Mick helped Zinch grow to an international, 8-figure revenue-run-rate startup that served millions of students and 800+ colleges & universities worldwide. After six years, Zinch was acquired by Chegg (CHGG, NYSE) for $45mm. Mick is currently CEO of Mainframe -- a new decentralized messaging protocol focused on productivity. A few of Mick's notable angel investments include Andela, Kalo, Degreed, Origin, Dice, Weav, and Good Audience. Mick is also a crypto investor and bought his first Bitcoin in 2013. Mick leads a crypto investment syndicate which focuses on early-stage, private pre-sale investments in blockchain projects. Some recent pre-sale investments include Polkadot, ICON, Wanchain, Zilliqa, Aion. Mick's crypto syndicate will invest between to $6-8M per month. Mick has been a speaker at various industry events including Techcrunch Disrupt, Mobile World Congress, Founders Forum, Gartner CIO Forum, InboxLove, TedX, Latitude59 and others. He’s a mentor to various accelerators including Techstars, Ignite, Barclays, StartupWiseGuys and CyLon. His writing has been featured in various newspapers and magazines, including Fortune Magazine and Techcrunch. Mick has been named to the v100 (Top high tech entrepreneurs) and Top 40 business persons under 40 by Utah Business Magazine. Mick's work has been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe, US News, Washington Post, CNN, and ABC among others. Mick also enjoys philanthropy/charity work and is currently on the Board of an international non-profit, Effect.org.