John Hanke

John Hanke
Hanke at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con International
Born	1967 (age 49–50)
Alma mater	University of Texas at Austin (B.A.) University of California, Berkeley (M.B.A.)
Occupation	Businessman and entrepreneur
Known for	Keyhole, Inc., Niantic, Inc., Google Earth, Ingress, Field Trip, Pokémon Go

John Hanke (born 1967) is an American entrepreneur and business executive. He is the founder and current CEO of Niantic, Inc., a software development company spun out of Google that designed Pokémon Go and Ingress. Hanke previously led Google's Geo division, which included Google Earth, Google Maps, Local, StreetView, SketchUp, and Panoramio.

Born in 1967, Hanke was raised in the small central Texas town of Cross Plains and graduated from Cross Plains High School in 1985. He attended the University of Texas, Austin and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1989.

In his first post-college role, he spent four years with the United States Foreign Service in Washington, DC and overseas in Myanmar working on foreign policy issues.

He moved across the country to attend the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined Steve Sellers and his video game design startup Archetype Interactive, which was developing Meridian 59, one of the first commercial massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). They sold the firm to The 3DO Company on the day he graduated from Berkeley in 1996 with an MBA. Hanke and Sellers created another entertainment startup, The Big Network, which was quickly sold in 2000 to eUniverse for $17.1 million.