Christopher Sacca (born May 12, 1975) is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Prior to founding Lowercase Capital in 2010, Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2017, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing.
Video Chris Sacca
Early life and education
Chris Sacca was born on May 12, 1975 and raised in a suburb of Buffalo. His father was an attorney, while his mother was a professor at SUNY Buffalo State. Sacca is of Irish and Italian descent, with family originating from Calabria, Italy. Sacca's parents exposed him to a variety of interests, and he recalls being pulled out of school to attend science museums and book-readings.
Sacca attended The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He spent semesters abroad at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, University College Cork, in Cork, Ireland, and the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. He graduated in 1997 cum laude with a B.S. in foreign service and was an Edmund Evans Memorial Scholar as well as a Weeks Family Foundation Scholar. He was a member of The Tax Lawyer law review and was honored as the school's Philip A. Ryan and Ralph J. Gilbert Memorial Scholar. He recalls that he managed to graduate without attending class, obtaining class notes, by throwing an annual keg party where entry required classmates to dump their notes in a bin. He graduated from Georgetown University with a Juris Doctor cum laude in law and technology in 2000.
Maps Chris Sacca
Career
Stocks and Fenwick & West
Sacca used his student loans to start a company during law school, and when the venture proved unsuccessful he used the remaining funds to start trading on the stock market. By leveraging trades for significant amounts (discovering a flaw in the software of online trading brokers in 1998) he managed to turn $10-20 thousand dollars into $12 million by 2000. Eventually, when the market crashed, Sacca found himself in debt with a four million dollar negative balance. He negotiated it down to just under 3 million, repaying it by February 2005.
Sacca began his career as an associate at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley where he handled venture capital, mergers, acquisitions, and licensing transactions for technology clients including Macromedia, VeriSign, and Kleiner Perkins. He was laid off after approximately 13 months. He spent the next few years attending every networking event possible and 'surviving' in Silicon Valley by drafting contracts for $50 on Craigslist and doing voice over work on sites including Elance and creating The Salinger Group for networking purposes. He eventually landed at Speedera Networks and later joined Google in November 2003.
Google positions
While at Google, Sacca began investing in companies as an angel investor, Sacca was hired at Google as Corporate Counsel reporting to General Counsel David Drummond. His first mandate was to find an infinite amount of data space, negotiate and sign agreements around the world. Sacca was among the first Google employees given the Founders' Award, the company's highest honor.
Sacca served as Head of Special Initiatives at Google Inc. He led the alternative access and wireless divisions. His most publicly visible projects include the 700 MHz and TV white spaces spectrum initiatives, Google's data center in Oregon, and the free citywide WiFi network in Mountain View, California. Sacca also led many of Google's business development and Mergers and acquisitions transactions. He was on the founding team of the company's New Business Development organization.
Angel investments
Sacca left Google in December 2007 after he had fully vested and sought opportunities to work with small companies (at an early stage). He did not have an abundance of funds typically available to venture capitalists or angel investors, which led to him being very involved in the companies he decided to invest in to help secure his return of investment including attending meetings at Twitter and Uber where he negotiated the rights for the name from Universal Music Group. His first angel investment was in Photobucket, which was then sold to Fox's parent company News Corp. His second investment was Twitter for $25,000. At one point, he exhausted all of his savings purchasing Twitter shares and was technically insolvent. He was also a professional advisor to companies for a variety of matters, from crafting strategy to optimizing user experience to helping raise money and selling the company. This included Octomatic (sold to Live Current Media) and Omnisio (sold to Google/YouTube). He either invested his own money or received equity in exchange for advising.
Lowercase Capital
In December 2007, Sacca founded venture capital firm Lowercase Capital. The fund provides capital and advisory services to start-ups and late-stage companies alike. Lowercase also has non-tech-related companies including Blue Bottle Coffee Company as well as a high end restaurant in Truckee. Forbes and Fortune have labeled Lowercase as one of the most successful venture capital funds in history from a "a return multiple perspective." Sacca has stated that a turning point was in 2007 when he moved to the town of Truckee in the mountains close to Lake Tahoe, where his hot tub the "Jam Tub" was born. Entrepreneurs including Travis Kalanick and Sacca would spend hours discussing ideas in the "Jam Tub." Eventually, Sacca bought the house next door to house the various young entrepreneurs that came to visit.
In 2013, Sacca brought in Matt Mazzeo to Lowercase Capital as a partner. Mazzeo had worked at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), an entertainment and sports agency. In 2015 Sacca announced that he's giving up on venture investing and along with it his role on Shark Tank, saying he was "two years late" on his plan to retire at 40 years old. He said his firm would continue to support its portfolio companies, but would not take on any new investments or raise more money from investors.
Shark Tank and media
Sacca regularly speaks about venture capital and investing in media. He has been characterized an expert by Business Week, Fortune magazine, CNBC, the BBC and CNN. Making television appearances, Sacca began to appear as a guest shark on ABC's reality television show Shark Tank in episode 4 of season 7. Subsequently appearing in three other season 7 episodes, Sacca invested in HatchBaby, Bee Free Honee, Rent Like a Champion, and Brightwheel. Sacca continued to appear as a guest shark in five episodes of season 8. Among others, he invested in a business that opens lemonade stands, and on February 17, 2017 in episode 168, Sacca along with guest Lori Greiner invested $600,000 for 5% of ToyMail, a plush toy which connects to a messaging app. Sacca has a role in the ABC sitcom Alex, Inc., where he plays himself and reenacts his interactions with Alex Blumberg.
Recognition
In 2015, Sacca was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine listed as number 3 on its Midas list. In 2017, he was listed as number 2 on the Midas List Top 20.
Personal life
Sacca's wife Crystal English Sacca is an advertising creative and has authored books such as The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert: Take a Whiff of That and The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-It-All: Know Your Booze Before you Choose. The couple have three children.
His signature cowboy shirt was something he first bought at an airport in Reno and given the reaction during meetings prompted him to buy out half the store on his return. In 2008 Sacca completed an Ironman and in 2009 rode his bicycle from Santa Barbara, California to Charleston, South Carolina over 40 days for charity. In 2017 the New York Times reported that a woman had accused Sacca of touching her face at a Las Vegas gathering in 2009 without consent, making her uncomfortable. Sacca denied the allegation, but did apologize for contributing to a business atmosphere that was "inhospitable" for women in technology and venture capital.
Philanthropy
Sacca is involved with charity: water, a nonprofit seeking to bring clean drinking water to every person on the planet. He is also involved with The Tony Hawk Foundation. Sacca has served as an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School at Oxford University and as an MIT Enterprise Forum Global Trustee. He is also a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
Political involvement
Sacca worked for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign as a Telecommunications, Media, and Technology advisor and campaign surrogate, as well as a field office volunteer. Following Obama's victory, Sacca served as co-chair of finance for the Presidential Inaugural Committee. During Obama's successful 2012 reelection campaign, Sacca served as a member of the campaign's National Finance Committee member and as co-chair of the "Tech for Obama" group. During the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Sacca was a vocal supporter of Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton, appearing in various fundraisers around the country. He spoke against Trump, and in response to President Donald Trump's 2017 executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations, Sacca donated $150,000 in matching donations to ACLU.
References
External links
- Official website
- Tim Ferriss interview with Chris Sacca
- Studio 1.0 host Emily Chang sits down with Chris Sacca, founder and chairman of Lowercase Capital, June 12, 2015 (Source: Bloomberg)
- Chris Sacca Forbes Page
Source of article : Wikipedia
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