📜 A Brief History Of Mike

Alaska

• Born Kenneth Michael Merrill in Fairbanks, Alaska on May 17th, 1977
• Raised in Coldfoot, AK, population 10
• Started public school: 5th grade in Soldotna, AK
• Graduated High School in Sitka, AK

The Army

• Joined the Army at 17
• Military Police
• Stationed in Alabama
• Stationed in Germany

Portland, Oregon

• Moved to Portland (done with snow)
• Worked a few private security jobs
• Got hired in non-tech roles at tech companies
  • Tripwire
  • LinuxFund
  • Tranxition

Urban Honking

• Moved into a house nicknamed “Rip City”
• Co-founded online magazine
• Converted magazine to local blog empire
• Three seasons of online reality show
• Started working at Panic, maker of fine Mac utilities and games

KmikeyM

• Inspired by the post-dotcom boom and bust launched publicly traded self

Chroma

• Started as a Nike+ TechStars accelerator company making games
• Spent a year building games for Nike before they cancelled Nike “fuel”
• Built games for Intel and VICE and plans to develop our own games
• Pivoted hard into financial technology and investment crowdfunding
• Launched a private investment portal in the state of Oregon
• Entered Barclays TechStars program in New York to develop small business stock market

Hollywood

• Sold my life rights to Jason Bateman for a movie that never happened
• Moved to Los Angeles to join an advertising agency
• Sold a show about my life to Amazon, left advertising
• Right now