Michael Sachaj

Michael Sachaj is a Senior Principal (also referred to as Partner) at Hyde Park Angels (HPA), one of Chicago's leading early-stage investor networks, founded in 2007. He manages and supports HPA's investment opportunities across their lifecycle — sourcing deals, conducting due diligence, supporting portfolio companies' follow-on rounds, and managing investment data. He also oversees HPA's University of Chicago Booth associate team.

He earned a BA in Political Science from Northwestern University (2009), where he says he studied startups extensively and had launched several companies during high school and college. After graduating, he spent roughly three years as a strategy consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, D.C., supporting government and Pentagon clients on process and customer-service improvement efforts.

Michael joined Hyde Park Angels in 2013 (introduced through a friend's referral) and has now been with the firm for more than a decade. During that time he has led or sourced several of HPA's top-performing investments, including Provi, Hologram, FourKites, and Motion AI. He credits HPA member and mentor Eddie Leshin with guiding his early successful work, including the investment in ShipBob. Beyond investing, he is fluent in Polish and describes himself as a sneakerhead and amateur mixologist.

• Invests at the seed / early stage, typically through HPA-led rounds in the ~$250K–$2M range, with HPA frequently leading early rounds in Chicago and the broader Midwest.
• Strong focus on industrial technology, logistics/supply chain, IT, and fintech — his marquee deals (FourKites, ShipBob) reflect deep conviction in logistics tech.
• Backs teams over solo founders: he prefers co-founding teams because they "bring different things to the table."
• AI-resilience lens: he pressure-tests whether a company's core function could be displaced by AI — "If you're invested in a part of the industry where in three to five years, AI will completely replace what they're doing, then that company from day one better be thinking" about that. He sees customer service as especially exposed, and conversely expects a resurgence of human channels (phone, text, email) as AI adoption grows.
• Values trust in regulated, data-sensitive industries as a durable moat.
• Writes extensively on startup finance fundamentals — term sheets, cap tables, valuation, option pools, and angel strategy — reflecting a hands-on, mechanics-aware approach to early deals.