Chris Sacca is one of the few VCs that people outside of the SV bubble and even the tech world know and associate with the valley.
He, along with Mark Cuban & potentially a few others will likely be part of the few of this era remembered many decades from now when history gets consolidated into a few figures, much like Gordon Moore of Intel & William Shockley of the Mountain View of the 1950's.
Yes, you can buy this from Cambridge Associates, and a few other "consultants." But it costs more than you would be willing to pay out of mere curiosity.
Generally speaking, the institutional limited partners (LPs; pension funds, endowments, family offices, etc.) that invest in venture and private equity incur pretty significant costs to get third-party information about actual performance by managers (i.e. VCs). From largest to smallest, LPs might generally: subscribe to Cambridge's data and use it in-house with full time staff, or hire a consultant (like Cambridge) to assess and help select their managers, or pay a fund-of-funds a fee (on the order of 1%) to do likewise.
The point of all that is: figuring out who is actually making money in VC, and guessing who is likely to continue doing so, is very non-trivial. It can't be done with publicly available, Crunchbase / Angel.co type data, much less a VC's own statements or portfolio listing page.
Pitchbook doesn't even come close to figuring out the actual invested amounts and returns across an investor's portfolio.
Don't get me wrong; Pitchbook is good and I pay $$$$ for it. But it serves a company-centric intel need, not an investment performance measurement need.
What is staggering about that list? It looks pretty much like any list of a VC that has survived. One or two big but not tremendous plays like Dropbox and a lot of companies I haven't heard of before.
Sorry to snark, but the ability to vet opportunities isn't necessarily a skill that allows individuals to gain such a staggering list of investments. It's worth noting he improperly "vetted" Snapchat[0]. On the other hand, getting proprietary deal flow is. It would be easy to rank him at the top on that.
It definitely has some part. I don't think the reason really matters. It's a variety of things including personality that somehow eek out of the niche field into the mainstream that causes a singular person to become associated with an entire movement.
As you know there is luck (of various types) involved for anyone who has ever gotten anywhere (even if family connections as a separate benefit there is also luck).
You have to give Mark credit for doing a good job of snowing and playing Yahoo that does take skill.
Look if Steve Jobs had grown up in, say, Iowa USA, had strong family ties that prevented him from even thinking about moving to Silicon Valley, where would he be today?
If Bill Gates's mother wasn't on the board of the Red Cross he'd never have the IBM connection that gave him the contract. (Forget as well that he was the right age at the right time as well).
Notoriety and wealth is always outsized relative to actual capabilities.
Was watching Bloomberg on 60 minutes. Sure Mike is a really smart guy. Worth 40 billion or whatever. But compared to a smart guy who is worth 3 million or in debt he isn't that much smarter (Edit: I mean as a percentage ..). It's always been like this.
I am not ever jealous that people have luck and great success. But I am typically annoyed at how other people (press, pundits, media, bloggers) give them accolades that essentially reduce to 'wow this guy is really smart capable' w/o acknowledging any luck at all.
You've got me thinking about the interplay of natural ability, hard work, luck and success.
How unsuccessful could someone be if they were extremely talented and hard-working, but had little luck. How far can luck push someone with no ability or desire? I suspect luck plays a greater role in our lives then we are willing to admit, even though it can be mitigated to some effect.
> How unsuccessful could someone be if they were extremely talented and hard-working, but had little luck.
Warren Buffet has a concept called the Ovarian Lottery. Why should someone's kid get gobs of money simply for being born into that family? He hates it, and for that reason isn't leaving billions for his kids, just handfuls of millions.
By being born in the US, you've already basically won, as your poverty line would be luxurious in many other countries. If he wasn't born in the US or a handful of other countries, even with the same drive and motivation he had, he wouldn't have been able to be successful like he has been because far more time would be spent seeking out food and basics of living.
> He hates it, and for that reason isn't leaving billions for his kids, just handfuls of millions.
I wish he would just shut up sometimes and stop being so avuncular and precocious.
He is leaving enough money to his kids to be able to have no financial issues and not having to work and be able to enjoy a nice life. And they are also getting a big halo boost just because they are his kids. Make no mistake about that. (I'd take that over $5 million in cash easily..)
Also he himself doesn't appear to see much value in all of his billions other than the fame that it gets him. He appears to enjoy it nominally and likes being well know and doing business much better. So he is making a value judgement as well based on what 'floats his boat' personally and marrying it to some concept that makes him appear to be so much like a common man.
If money is not that important to him, then why not give it away now and not just to charity?
That's true. But the effects of leverage and as they say in Dutch 'the devil shitting on the larger heap' (meaning: that once you have money it becomes a lot easier to make more of it) should not be underestimated.
Didn't Larry Page and Sergey Brin got rich off of one deal? As far as "probably shouldn't have happened", what does that even mean, not in the literal sense but there are how many people that have ended up either penniless or rich as hell due to things that "probably shouldn't have happened"?
No, Larry Page and Sergey Brin got rich of making an incredible contribution to the world of knowledge organization and then continued to build on that. That's why Google is still around so many years later, and that's why they still own a good chunk of it.
What is the last time you went to 'broadcast.com'?
That deal shouldn't have happened because there was no substance to what was sold (ok, fault of the buyer, a certain company whose name starts with Y).
Ok, so you're saying there is no substance to "radio on the internet" (I assume that since nothing weird or shady jumped out at me from the wiki article). So by that same token there should be be no substance to "TV on the internet", a la Netflix but I don't think anyone would try and make that case.
Regardless of net contribution to the good of society, one deal is one deal. Cuban wouldn't have gotten rich if he didn't have stock to sell to Yahoo (one deal), Brin/Page wouldn't have gotten rich if they didn't have and continue to have stock in Google (one deal). Everything any of them did afterwards is leverage the success of the first deal.
Google is a hugely profitable company used by 100s of millions of people.
Broadcast.com was an unprofitable sham with around half a million users. It only got bought because it was 1999 and people were acting crazy. It was shut down completely within 3 years.
I didn't compare Google to Broadcast, I compared the effect the outcome the cashout of both companies had on their respective beneficiaries to leverage subsequent deals and investments.
Or it could have nothing to do with that, and be exactly what he says - he achieved what he set out to do and realizes that he now wants to do something else with his life, and has the time and resources to do so.
Many times it's both: personal circumstances will make someone want to retire, but if things look good in the markets, they'll hold on for a year or two, and if things start looking tapped out that'll give them permission to step back. He's 2 years late, after all.
After having founded a number of startup, I know how it is to be in an all consuming thing. I would imagine as a conscience VC you would have to feel all in on many projects.
Nah. We were talking to lowercase three years ago and Mazzeo was already running the day to day for Sacca to spend more time with his family. This is a personal thing and has been a long time coming.
People just have different interests. Why do you think only 1 person would leave if it was topped out as you say? All the other ones just want to waste money?
These types of comments are always hilarious. Really? You think we've topped out on 1bn dollar companies in the year 2017? AI, Self Driving Cars, Improvements to Flying, SPACE!? You honestly think there's nothing left to invest in?
Useful AI and SAE 5 cars are multiple years away, and this leg of the business cycle is already 9 years old.
As for the other two categories, only SpaceX is relevant in the spacelaunch world, and I don't think they're going public anytime soon. I don't know of any startups that I would say have a decent chance in commercial aviation.
"Useful AI" is vague enough that you can probably make any sort of statement about it. If you mean things like an Echo that can take "understand" and take actions on the level of a slightly dull personal assistant, you're probably right. (Which is at least correlated with SAE 5.)
Of course, there's all sorts of machine learning and related AI-ish things that are potentially useful in the interim.
You may have misunderstood my point. I'm saying that being able to interact with a digital assistant (I only used Echo as an example) the way I would with a human admin and have it take appropriate actions is many years away. It would be an interesting application for many of us, but it's not close.
I'll believe AI is good for something other than YouTube recommending Top 40 music for me to play next, when Google News stops showing pictures of unrelated celebrities next to political stories (e.g.).
He's in the extremely privileged position to fund ten thousand people's potentially world-changing dreams. Instead, he's going to squander it podcasting in his pajamas.
We need someone with the ambition Paul Graham had when he launched Y Combinator.
Silicon Valley is still not a meritocracy. There are still tens of thousands of ambitious people not receiving funding. There's still no way for the early users of massive products to buy equity and lift themselves from the lower class.
There is no greater lever in the world than technology, no better way to create technology than startups, and no more sure way to create great startups than by funding them.
No, he's not squandering anything. He's placing a higher value on time with his kids and wife than on time with an "ambitious" founder. No one deserves anything or is required to do anything.
From what primary facts does such a moral imperative arise? I would suggest that there is no such moral imperative at all and no one should accept that there is until the foundation of such an imperative is clearly and rationally stated. Many make the presumptive leap that morality must necessarily be altruistic with little rational basis for that leap. I disagree that genuine altruism is a moral necessity and will do so until I see substantial, rational arguments as to why altruist moral systems are superior to egoist moral systems. (note that benevolence != altruistic and exists comfortably within egoist moral systems).
When you achieve a position by working very hard and risking nearly everything you have, I wouldn't consider that a "privilege". He earned the right to do whatever he wants.
I can easily find a dozen or so people who work just as hard, and are nowhere near as successful. While I won't discount what he achieved, privilege is definitely the right word.
I think "fortunate" is a more appropriate description. Of course part of his journey was luck and those other people have not been as fortunate. "Privelege" is generally something that is granted to you by another entity.
Chris Sacca's background story is little known and he talks about it at length with Jason Calacanis. The part about him losing millions while still at university is as shocking as his recovery from the setback is amazing. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VOQnK7O2To
Gotta vote this one up so that everyone who reads the article knows it's Chris Sacca.. since his name is nowhere on the page and I'd venture most people don't know he's Lowercase Capital.
I think his story is funnier on this one, and he drops some foreshadowing hints here as to why Trump won, even before Obama's second electoral win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I
> During law school, Sacca used his student loans to start a company which was unsuccessful and used what was left to start trading on the stock market. By leveraging trades for significant amounts (discovering a flaw in the software of online trading brokers)[15] he managed to turn 10–20 thousand dollars into 12 million dollars.[15] Eventually, when the market crashed, Sacca found himself in debt with a four million dollar negative balance. He negotiated to have it reduced to just under 3 Million and by February 2005 it was completely repaid. [15]
Wow. I'm not sure it's possible for me to imagine what it would be like to have 12 million dollars and then lose it all plus three million more. I guess.. maybe not a huge deal if you have unwavering confidence that you'll just make it back again?
What was the flaw? Also, isn't starting a company with your student loans illegal?
> He says he managed to graduate without attending class. In order to obtain class notes, he threw an annual keg party where entry required classmates to dump their notes in a bin.
The flaw was that the early online trading systems didn't include provisions for reg-T, which stopped leverage at I think 50 percent of your balance. So, you could borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock with a thousand dollar account balance. He goes into detail on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I
> Also, isn't starting a company with your student loans illegal?
I don't think he meant using the money he was loaned to pay for classes but using the money the loan provides for living expenses. That money is completely up to you to figure out what to spend it on.
I'm not sure that federal or private loans could be used to start a company, even if you listed that one of your "living expenses" was "starting a company."
There isn't a lot of policing of what students use their student loan living expenses for, but I don't think that means you're free to do whatever you want with it legally.
Also, it's amazing how the child a doctor and a professor would be praised for cheating the government at a grand scale while our society is busy watching what poor people buy with EBT (food stamps) at the grocery store.
I don't find these details of Sacca's story admirable.
He could have taken the easy way out of his problems and declared bankruptcy. I think most would have, but he paid back all his debts, the hard way; that seems admirable to me.
Well there definitely is no criminal law against starting a company with student loans. It would be up to the actual contract he signed which might not say anything about how you spend the money as long as you you aren't lying about anything in the application(ie. amount of income you make, actually being registered for classes etc).
Yes, I believe in this whole technology "koolaid" thing. I'm sure you don't use anything created by startups in your daily life, like products from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Tesla, Ford, Amazon, etc.
Apple and Google are startups now? Only in the sense that pretty much every company in existence was a startup (in the broadest sense of the word) once.
Yes. And pretty much every product and service I use on a day to day basis was created by a company that was once small and may have received outside investment even if only friends and family. And just about every product and service has some technology component or innovation that differentiates itself.
But now you're just arguing that companies build the products we use and companies start small which, while overwhelmingly true, is hardly a statement about the output of technology startups specifically.
Which was the main point I was trying to make. Furthermore, if you use the strict designed-for-rapid-growth definition for startups, a number of those companies were probably never startups. I don't think Apple, for example, fits today's classic startup mold.
(I'm not saying I completely buy this definition but some people insist on using it.)
"It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that opened travel to the common middle-class American; some of this was because of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting."
Has anyone else noticed that a bunch of people leaving the investing scene/liquidizing in the past year are part of the same circle? Specifically Sacca, Tim Ferriss, and Richard Branson?
I'm not saying they're the same thing. But there is the appearance that they are effectively "getting out of the game". Not mentioning he is selling stock doesn't mean he hasn't sold some of it. Especially considering Sacca has a lot of Twitter stock and he's ridden the rise and fall from $90+ down to its current levels.
I don't know too many of Ferris' investments, but the few I did know seemed like he would have to change the world almost to make them work. Whereas other investors might have a couple of moonshots like that, but they also have a bunch of investments that solve problems that people face right now, not ones they might face in the future.
I remember he was talking about those protein bars made out of crickets. And there is valid concerns about the future of food with synthetic meats etc. But cricket bars... I mean we are so far off from that being a mass selling product.
>Ferriss pulled out because he's no good at it. (Easier to be a charlatan in books rather than investing).
Can you elaborate on that? He's spoken about his startup portfolio being a disturbingly high portion of his net worth because it's grown rapidly and is illiquid.
That is proof of poor investing common-sense: startups, without a sensible inbound qualification pipeline, is just about the riskiest kind of investing. Would anyone want a foolish investor (apart from not caring situations) or rather have a shrew investor whom can add value?
Eh that seems a bit harsh. Wasn't Ferris in Uber's pre-seed or seed round? Plus he mentions Facebook, Shopify, Twitter and Alibaba on his AngelList. I'm pretty sure if you're one guy making $25-$100k bets and hit early on any one of those it is more than enough for you to be considered pretty good.
Brand Ferriss LOL. The thing that really sold me on his nut-content was an old blog article which mentally-wandered into mystical, utopian BS.
Too many startup people worship someone, someone they don't really know anything about, like a god just because they can project their hopes and desires on someone whom has mantained their vagueness with elusiveness and seductive propaganda. Like a pied piper for the purposes of manufacturing memes for profit.
I'd never heard of him before this since I don't pay much attention to VC. Introducing the person you're talking about is always a good idea when writing about them.
Sometimes I think people in the Valley don't realize they live in a microcosm. I had never heard of Chris Sacca before Shark Tank, and I've raised venture capital in the Bay Area before.
I had never heard of Shark Tank, or any of the people mentioned so far in this thread until I stumbled upon a mispost somewhere on Hacker News. I don't get why people would watch that. The investors came off as idiots.
Hadn't heard of it either. Sounds like a very greedy guy that just has to blog about his trials and tribulations, and explain just how his greed is actually "drive" and "working hard". This VC kowtowing is sickening.
I just started listening to the Startup podcast, which features Chris in the first episode. He seems to be a very intelligent and talented guy while still remaining grounded. I wish him well with his future endeavors.
Also, ten minutes after reading the article, I just realized the pun in the name "Lowercase Capital."
I just made this connection when I was looking at their portfolio [https://lowercasecapital.com/posse/], and saw Gimlet Media. Lot of interesting stuff on that page.
I just started listening to StartUp as well (I like several other Gimlet shows) and he seems incredibly smart. StartUp is also a great podcast if anyone is looking for something to listen to (start from the first season).
It's interesting to think about this decision in the context of Nassim Taleb's writing. If you have a large sample of investors, some of them would be good just by chance. It's possible that Chris Sacca is not good just by chance, but we can't really know, and that is an excellent feature of walking away at this point. Most people will just tell themselves that Sacca "beat the game" and left. It could easily be that he got super lucky and realized it.
Of course chance plays a huge role, but entropically speaking, the idea that all investors have equal skill seems a bit absurd.
Now, whether "investing skill" is something that can be meaningfully distilled and taught to others is a whole different question. I think the answer is closer to "no" than "yes". The industry-wide distribution of the long term performance of fund managers seems to provide cursory evidence to support this.
> As a rich white guy, being an activist/loudmouth in the #resistance often means taking up political positions that are against my own apparent self-interest. These oppressive zealots in the White House...
> You mean beyond fighting a despotic regime...
> I assure you, that’s not going to happen. Nevertheless, I am spending a great deal of time meeting with all of the beautifully spontaneous and decentralized organizations that have been popping up in the wake of our electoral calamity as well as dozens of candidates at all levels of government. I find so much hope in the new wave of leaders and builders who are standing up during these times and I want to be there to support them. I will have more to say about this in the days ahead, but, you know the drill.
I'm sure that this is a common sentiment out in the Valley, but it's really kinda distressing to see people with access to so much capital writing with such melodrama.
There's so much wrong at the local level--homelessness, education, people broke with medical problems--and yet these folks seem a lot more concerned with a strawman oppression.
It's not a strawman opposition when you see people you work with unable to re-enter the country, environmental leadership questioning the human role in global warming (or even the role of CO2 in warming!), members of organizations that openly identify with the Nazi movement as first tier advisors to the president, etc...
This is not a strawman, this is real and it's worth fighting.
So are the other things you mention, but everyone is free to pick their fight.
Everyone is free to pick their fight, sure, but when people have accumulated great power there is great responsibility, no?
And if these people come from a philosophical and cultural and political monoculture, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious about them. FWIW, I feel the same way about the energy execs and crooked politicians--except in the case of at least Trump, there is at least a mandate of government granted by the people that voted for him.
Who, exactly, voted for these millionaires? Nobody.
So if the next election goes the other way, you're going to be supportive of the Chris Saccas of the world and discount the Gary Cohns and Steven Bannons? (note I purposefully am picking two very divergent points of view from within the Trump administration who happen to be multimillionaires).
At the end of the day, I personally care about actions and how they stack up against my personal ethical and moral compass. You are obviously free to use whatever method you want to decide if someone is doing good in the world. And yes, Sacca is free to spend his money however he likes. I also support Rebekah Mercer's right to spend her money on vicious attack ads. I don't have to respect her for it -- regardless of who won the election -- and you don't have to respect Chris Sacca.
Regarding monocultures -- circumscribe a set tightly enough and everyone comes from a monoculture. I don't think Sacca is any less exposed to divergent viewpoints than the Mercer's are, to use a relevant example.
And finally, just to respond to your overarching argument that Sacca has some responsibility to use his money in a particular way. He may believe so, and that wouldn't make it any more your business how he does it. And if he chooses to spend it on wine, art, and yacht collecting because that's what he wants to do with it we can both believe he can do better (Larry Ellison, if you're reading this: you can do better) -- but the society we live in hasn't made us the arbiters of good billionaire behavior, more's the pity. :)
So, if Bannon and Cohn were to go and start rabble-rousing about the "resistance" and the "despotic democrats" (and Lord knows folks did plenty of that when Obama took office), I'd be similarly annoyed.
My overarching argument is not quite that Sacca has a responsibility to use his money in a particular way--it's more that I find it distressing that powerful people (that arguably should know better) seem to have gotten caught up in the zeitgeist of the times and aren't being more conservative (in the "wait, let's stop and think about what we're actually advocating and how that could play out") and open-minded (in the "wait, maybe these other points of view are simply different and not always wrong").
I feel the same way about folks on the other side--they just tend not to show up on HN as much.
With most people, I'd agree with you that local engagement would be more effective. Doubly so in the homeless hating bay area.
However, Chris' access to capital, which equates to power in America, makes it more successful for him to fight on the federal level. trump in the white house has emboldened local behavior that threatens our education/healthcare systems, the homeless and countless other social safety net related issues. There are plenty of us left who can bring the fight on the local level. I'm coming around to the idea that winning the larger fights is also important.
I've not heard of Chris Sacca before reading this article. He appears to be that rare person with an understanding of the social obligations of wealth and the means to build some larger communities around that.
I'm unconvinced that somebody who made their money in many cases exploiting the little guy ( https://lowercasecapital.com/posse/ ) is suddenly finding religion here in any meaningful way.
Action at the large levels is remote and indistinct, and boils down to status signalling and rich people games.
Paying for housing and food and shelter and schooling and grants and libraries and hospitals goes a hell of a lot farther...just see the good works of Carnegie and Kaiser, to name two.
Your criticism here is that he expressed his opposition to Trump with too much "melodrama"? That's pretty weak. Sometimes dramatic things happen. Sometimes dramatic language is warranted.
Yes, at the margins, EVERYTHING a President does will hurt people, cost lives, etc. One can only hope that, on balance, their decisions are beneficial rather than negative. In that sense, you can look for (and find!) outrage or great success in any person with such a weighty job.
For that reason, I don't disagree that there's a lot wrong at the local level, and in many ways any action you could personally take would be better taken at such a level where you can create real impact.
That said, I'm not sure it's at all melodramatic when you consider the tone that the "leader of the free world" sets in terms of what's socially acceptable, how to treat others, and so on. And I don't mean in the sense of "oh, anti-Semitic attacks are up 13.5%!" -- there is SO much that can be fudged in compiling this kind of data. I mean more in the sense of "suddenly it's acceptable to be an unrepentant outright liar every hour of the day, and people will not just look past it, but literally disbelieve their own ears."
Sacca is 'raising three wonderful kids' and 'passionate about solving our climate disaster'. The first thing to do to help climate change is to avoid reduce the population, not to increase it. Are only others supposed to make sacrifices?
I thought the bubble was going to 'burst' in 2012. I also thought the Vancouver RE market was going to burst 10 years ago too in 2007. And it still hasn't burst, it just flatlined and then kept on going.
Chris won the Twitter lottery.... and the Uber lottery.... and the Instagram lottery..... and a bunch of other lotteries. Had arguably the best run of seed investing in history.
I think it's public he owns Uber and owned it early. I think it's early to say if that was a "win"; I reckon he got in at a good val but Uber ain't public and w/ a braindrain, 2 lawsuits, likely death of their AI program, ceding China to Didi and public backlash idk if it's got legs.
Chris made a lot of money and he did a lot of interesting things. He's interesting and a lot was luck and a lot was skill. That said, Twitter (if he exited a bit post IPO was the companies big win. You only need one though.
Edit: Forgot about Instagram. He crushed it. Point is more Uber might not be as big, but his track record is amazing compared to other shops
You can click on any of the several links in this thread to see that you forgot more than Instagram.
I don't have any affection for Sacca, don't know him, don't care about him, etc. But he's factually been an incredible investor and it's just weird to see concerted effort to dispute that for no reason. He could be all sorts of negative things but he was a hell of a seed investor and that's in the books and he's got the receipts.
I have seen almost every interview he's done. Admire a lot about him. Not discrediting him at all, just saying Uber might be too close to call.
The one thing I would say is that he is pretty flashy and a bit of a braggard which many are; but going on SharkTank was a bit much. Guy has been super successful objectively my point was just that (to me, subjectively) it sort of feels like he's an entertainer more than an investor and values the fame and spotlight more than tech. Obviously his motivation doesn't matter vs. The track record but if I am critical of him it's just that it feels off vs. people like Steve Jurvetson or Horowitz who value innovation, technology and are happy to promote that above themselves
He is naturally a bit puffed up and that was a common critique of him from back in the Google days. I think this personality type is somewhat common among successful seed investors where being a "tech personality" helps with getting deal flow. Name brand institutional investors like Jurvetson and Horowitz don't need to rely on such tricks for deal flow.
Once you have a one big win under your belt, it becomes easier to hit other big wins because you have greater access to capital to diversify your bets as well as much better deal flow. He did have an incredible run, which I would attribute to equal parts hard work, skill, and luck.
the 2010-2015 era of generous outcomes for early-stage startups is over. No more easy follow-on rounds or acquisitions. Being VC becomes a lot harder so all these non-institutional personality guys - Sacca, Tim Ferris, Ashton Kutcher, and Russ Hanneman types are going to move on.
If Forbes is accurate, then so is Sacca, although I imagine some non-trivial amount of that is in Uber, which is facing downward pressure on its private market valuation.
A very nice write up ruined by very partisan ramblings in the end. There is nothing wrong in believing in liberal cause, but to consider the other side as devil incarnate is a bit disturbing.
It's a personal post, why shouldn't he have an opinion?
Also, how do you get to "devil incarnate"? The most negative thing he said was that the current administration are oppressive zealots. Note that he didn't specifically call out Republicans. The current administration has flouted norms, both Democratic and Republican.
"I think the institutions, principles, norms, and traditions that make the United States of America genuinely exceptional are at serious risk. It has been hard to think about anything else."
"These oppressive zealots in the White House"
"fighting a despotic regime"
Of course he can have an opinion, and it seems like everyone's got one. It's less clear why the reader should care. And statements like this:
"My career would not have progressed without the leadership and contributions of immigrants of virtually every race, ethnicity, and faith. Period."
I mean, there are a lot of races, ethnicities, and faiths in the world, and not all of them care to immigrate. The hyperbole just smacks of virtue signaling, which some people enjoy and others don't. Depends on how you react to the signal, I suppose.
> The hyperbole just smacks of virtue signaling, which some people enjoy and others don't.
Why is everything that democrats/liberal say deemed "virtue signaling" now? Do liberals have any genuine principles at all? Are some liberals signaling these virtues to other liberals who genuinely have principles, or is "virtue signaling all the way down"?
(BTW, I'm not American and don't identify neither as liberal or conservative)
The principle they adhere to most strongly is that the ends justify the means. Virtually everything they do flows from that.
Of course, that leaves the questions of what the ends are, and whether their means will effect them. From recent history, it would seem that the answer to the latter is, to some degree, yes. However, there is now significant pushback, leading to further polarization on both sides. The two sides do not ultimately desire the same ends, although many politicians claim that they do in order to establish a "moderate" position and retain their seats.
We may be in for some rough times ahead, politically. However, the Constitution has seen us through worse; as long as it is respected by those in office, we will ultimately come out intact. But I'm afraid that is not a given, since one side now sees the Constitution as "living" and evolving to meet the interpretations that will help effect their ends. If only they would pursue the amendment process instead of...creative interpretation.
Liberals who genuinely have principles are doing productive things, not writing blog posts with all the hip liberal keywords shoehorned in. Zealots? A _despotic regime_? I'm no Trump defender but those descriptors are either intentional hyperbole (ie: virtue signaling), or the author truly has no idea what they mean in the context of world history (which I find impossible to believe).
It's very disturbing but it's a leftist thing, not a liberal thing. Based on what he writes, he's a leftist. How productive can any conversation be when you have such a backwards and unfair starting point that the other side is evil? Leftists also assume minorities can't do certain things and that only they can save them because they are the enlightened ones. Leftists are far removed from being progressive and tolerant.
I've noticed that my liberal friends have even gravitated toward this leftist propaganda that the other side is made up of bad people. It's part of their core and part of their strategy to divide and conquer. If the other side is made of bad people - then your side will never leave you. In fact they won't even engage in discussion with opposing viewpoints.
The problem with your worldview is it leaves you totally unprepared for the scenario when the other side genuinely elects an evil or destructive person. It presumes there's always a rough moral equality between the two sides.
We have historical examples of evil and destructive regimes being legitimately elected. It's not impossible.
Sacca claims we are observing another example, right now, in America.
I don't think it presumes there is moral equality at all. Rather, it's perfectly possible for an evil and destructive regime to be elected by misinformed or desperate people, and you might be wrong about voters' motives when you assume that they voted the way they did out of pure hatred and malice.
It absolutely doesn't. My view starts with assuming people with opposing viewpoints in the US aren't evil or bad people. AFTER you've engaged in discussion and their true intentions are known you can make more honest conclusions on that person or group of people. That's not what leftists do.
Your comment says destructive and evil in the same sentence. Again - being destructive or making bad calls - doesn't make you a bad person or evil. Incompetent yes; evil probably not. Every politician does destructive things, especially when those things are often subjective based on your philosophy.
The equivalent on the right is when they say that their opposition hates America because they have different perspectives and want to drastically change things. That's not cool either.
What's interesting is that if you look at history, the leftists are by far the most evil (Mao, Stalin, etc) and it's not even close. Evil is not a word that should be thrown around loosely like the leftists do daily.
The problem I have seen play out with friends that have tons of relatively easy money fall into their laps is that it saps ambition. Waking up every morning knowing that you have enough money for a hundred lifetimes can be freeing, but also means that you aren't required to do anything at all. Many people in that situation choose exactly that.
My understanding is that Chris isn't the nicest guy in the world, so perhaps he's doing entrepreneurs a favor by backing other VC's. Some of his capital will still be out backing startups, but their founders won't have to put up with him personally.
> I am spending a great deal of time meeting with all of the beautifully spontaneous and decentralized organizations that have been popping up in the wake of our electoral calamity as well as dozens of candidates at all levels of government.
Does anyone know where (or how) to find these organizations?
I'd love to get involved in some of these organizations that are trying to build a better future for our country, and try to contribute/help in any way that I can.
Come work at Binti! We're a start up in SF, not working on politics or democracy per se, but are improving foster care in the US. Lowercase invested. https://binti.com
Something about describing your retirement as "hanging up my spurs" bothers me on an unreasonable level. Unless you actually were a cowboy. I mean when I retire from IT work I hope I'm not going to tell people I'm "stowing away my space helmet and locking my plasma rifles in the cabinet".
Wow, 42 years old, huh? Hard not to be a little jealous. Being pretty close to his age, it's maddening to think that with a different roll of the dice I might have been that person. Or I might have been unemployed and a heroin addict in Appalachia. Life seems so random and non-deterministic.
Good on him. I sometimes wonder why more people who are insanely rich don't just retire and spend the rest of their lives doing something else...or doing nothing. I think of the C-level execs in my own company--they each have so much that they and their families for generations could literally do nothing for the rest of their lives and still continue to get richer via interest. Why go on working?
or he's a smart guy who put himself in a good position for success by getting into great schools and then making connections with the right people while at Google. You don't make the consistent home-run investments he has through complete luck.
Fantastic!! I feel that one feels most alive when you're involved in some struggle. And if you've really achieved a high level of excellence in your field...may be the right time to trying something new! Michael Jordan tried baseball!
That said, I feel getting involved in political issues is mostly a losing situation because your power (even the power of the president as we've seen perhaps thankfully in the past 90 days is highly limited) to get something accomplished is so limited. Also, the solution to most problems is not new laws or new politics. I remember a professor at my college spent years getting the exam dates shifted three days earlier from a Tuesday to a Friday...that's the speed & work of politics, frustrating.
I think he's hinting at something political but not running for office. I'm guessing some sort of involvement in the 2020 Presidential Campaign for some Dem or Alt candidate.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 84.7 ms ] threadHe, along with Mark Cuban & potentially a few others will likely be part of the few of this era remembered many decades from now when history gets consolidated into a few figures, much like Gordon Moore of Intel & William Shockley of the Mountain View of the 1950's.
Are there places that track this info among VCs?
Generally speaking, the institutional limited partners (LPs; pension funds, endowments, family offices, etc.) that invest in venture and private equity incur pretty significant costs to get third-party information about actual performance by managers (i.e. VCs). From largest to smallest, LPs might generally: subscribe to Cambridge's data and use it in-house with full time staff, or hire a consultant (like Cambridge) to assess and help select their managers, or pay a fund-of-funds a fee (on the order of 1%) to do likewise.
The point of all that is: figuring out who is actually making money in VC, and guessing who is likely to continue doing so, is very non-trivial. It can't be done with publicly available, Crunchbase / Angel.co type data, much less a VC's own statements or portfolio listing page.
Don't get me wrong; Pitchbook is good and I pay $$$$ for it. But it serves a company-centric intel need, not an investment performance measurement need.
Can you please expand on this? Genuinely curious as to what the metrics are in this case.
What is staggering about that list? It looks pretty much like any list of a VC that has survived. One or two big but not tremendous plays like Dropbox and a lot of companies I haven't heard of before.
Sorry to snark, but the ability to vet opportunities isn't necessarily a skill that allows individuals to gain such a staggering list of investments. It's worth noting he improperly "vetted" Snapchat[0]. On the other hand, getting proprietary deal flow is. It would be easy to rank him at the top on that.
[0] - https://twitter.com/sacca/status/837400028352151552
You have to give Mark credit for doing a good job of snowing and playing Yahoo that does take skill.
Look if Steve Jobs had grown up in, say, Iowa USA, had strong family ties that prevented him from even thinking about moving to Silicon Valley, where would he be today?
If Bill Gates's mother wasn't on the board of the Red Cross he'd never have the IBM connection that gave him the contract. (Forget as well that he was the right age at the right time as well).
Notoriety and wealth is always outsized relative to actual capabilities.
Was watching Bloomberg on 60 minutes. Sure Mike is a really smart guy. Worth 40 billion or whatever. But compared to a smart guy who is worth 3 million or in debt he isn't that much smarter (Edit: I mean as a percentage ..). It's always been like this.
I am not ever jealous that people have luck and great success. But I am typically annoyed at how other people (press, pundits, media, bloggers) give them accolades that essentially reduce to 'wow this guy is really smart capable' w/o acknowledging any luck at all.
How unsuccessful could someone be if they were extremely talented and hard-working, but had little luck. How far can luck push someone with no ability or desire? I suspect luck plays a greater role in our lives then we are willing to admit, even though it can be mitigated to some effect.
Homeless level bad.
> How far can luck push someone with no ability or desire?
Extremely far.
I have seen examples of both, luck is a huge factor, and it comes in many guises (timing, circumstances, meeting the right person and so on).
> How unsuccessful could someone be if they were extremely talented and hard-working, but had little luck.
Warren Buffet has a concept called the Ovarian Lottery. Why should someone's kid get gobs of money simply for being born into that family? He hates it, and for that reason isn't leaving billions for his kids, just handfuls of millions.
By being born in the US, you've already basically won, as your poverty line would be luxurious in many other countries. If he wasn't born in the US or a handful of other countries, even with the same drive and motivation he had, he wouldn't have been able to be successful like he has been because far more time would be spent seeking out food and basics of living.
I wish he would just shut up sometimes and stop being so avuncular and precocious.
He is leaving enough money to his kids to be able to have no financial issues and not having to work and be able to enjoy a nice life. And they are also getting a big halo boost just because they are his kids. Make no mistake about that. (I'd take that over $5 million in cash easily..)
Also he himself doesn't appear to see much value in all of his billions other than the fame that it gets him. He appears to enjoy it nominally and likes being well know and doing business much better. So he is making a value judgement as well based on what 'floats his boat' personally and marrying it to some concept that makes him appear to be so much like a common man.
If money is not that important to him, then why not give it away now and not just to charity?
Please get me a couple billion dollars if it's so easy. Thanks.
What is the last time you went to 'broadcast.com'?
That deal shouldn't have happened because there was no substance to what was sold (ok, fault of the buyer, a certain company whose name starts with Y).
For some more background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast.com
Regardless of net contribution to the good of society, one deal is one deal. Cuban wouldn't have gotten rich if he didn't have stock to sell to Yahoo (one deal), Brin/Page wouldn't have gotten rich if they didn't have and continue to have stock in Google (one deal). Everything any of them did afterwards is leverage the success of the first deal.
Broadcast.com was an unprofitable sham with around half a million users. It only got bought because it was 1999 and people were acting crazy. It was shut down completely within 3 years.
Comparing the two is silly.
That's not what they said. They said that there was no substance to Broadcast.com specifically.
When the smart big players start to take their chips off the table you can be sure this thing has peaked.
As for the other two categories, only SpaceX is relevant in the spacelaunch world, and I don't think they're going public anytime soon. I don't know of any startups that I would say have a decent chance in commercial aviation.
Of course, there's all sorts of machine learning and related AI-ish things that are potentially useful in the interim.
Fully agree on the other points.
We need someone with the ambition Paul Graham had when he launched Y Combinator.
Silicon Valley is still not a meritocracy. There are still tens of thousands of ambitious people not receiving funding. There's still no way for the early users of massive products to buy equity and lift themselves from the lower class.
There is no greater lever in the world than technology, no better way to create technology than startups, and no more sure way to create great startups than by funding them.
"With great power comes great responsibility."
"To whom much is given, much is required."
That kind of thing.
It's amazing how few people in Silicon Valley make a billion dollars and then go on to do anything useful with it at all.
This criticism applies to the ten thousand people, like Sacca, that made a fortune off Silicon Valley and then "called in rich."
What would you think of Bill Gates had he not put his fortune to good use?
When you achieve a position by working very hard and risking nearly everything you have, I wouldn't consider that a "privilege". He earned the right to do whatever he wants.
http://foundation.bz/7/
> During law school, Sacca used his student loans to start a company which was unsuccessful and used what was left to start trading on the stock market. By leveraging trades for significant amounts (discovering a flaw in the software of online trading brokers)[15] he managed to turn 10–20 thousand dollars into 12 million dollars.[15] Eventually, when the market crashed, Sacca found himself in debt with a four million dollar negative balance. He negotiated to have it reduced to just under 3 Million and by February 2005 it was completely repaid. [15]
[15] http://www.financemagnates.com/forex/brokers/chris-saccathe-...
> He says he managed to graduate without attending class. In order to obtain class notes, he threw an annual keg party where entry required classmates to dump their notes in a bin.
I sure wouldn't want that guy as my lawyer.
I don't think he meant using the money he was loaned to pay for classes but using the money the loan provides for living expenses. That money is completely up to you to figure out what to spend it on.
I could be wrong about that though...
There isn't a lot of policing of what students use their student loan living expenses for, but I don't think that means you're free to do whatever you want with it legally.
Also, it's amazing how the child a doctor and a professor would be praised for cheating the government at a grand scale while our society is busy watching what poor people buy with EBT (food stamps) at the grocery store.
I don't find these details of Sacca's story admirable.
The former happens so rarely it doesn't get much attention at all.
How did the Koolaid taste? You certainly must have drunk enough of it.
Mark Markkula funded Apple.
Andy Bechtolsheim funded Google.
These didn't happen by accident. They weren't inevitable.
But now you're just arguing that companies build the products we use and companies start small which, while overwhelmingly true, is hardly a statement about the output of technology startups specifically.
(I'm not saying I completely buy this definition but some people insist on using it.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T
"It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that opened travel to the common middle-class American; some of this was because of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting."
If you don't think every major corporation doesn't have quite a few technological gems hidden up their sleeves you're fooling yourself.
I'm certain there might be more people.
I remember he was talking about those protein bars made out of crickets. And there is valid concerns about the future of food with synthetic meats etc. But cricket bars... I mean we are so far off from that being a mass selling product.
Can you elaborate on that? He's spoken about his startup portfolio being a disturbingly high portion of his net worth because it's grown rapidly and is illiquid.
Too many startup people worship someone, someone they don't really know anything about, like a god just because they can project their hopes and desires on someone whom has mantained their vagueness with elusiveness and seductive propaganda. Like a pied piper for the purposes of manufacturing memes for profit.
Also, ten minutes after reading the article, I just realized the pun in the name "Lowercase Capital."
https://genius.com/Jay-z-encore-lyrics
Now, whether "investing skill" is something that can be meaningfully distilled and taught to others is a whole different question. I think the answer is closer to "no" than "yes". The industry-wide distribution of the long term performance of fund managers seems to provide cursory evidence to support this.
> You mean beyond fighting a despotic regime...
> I assure you, that’s not going to happen. Nevertheless, I am spending a great deal of time meeting with all of the beautifully spontaneous and decentralized organizations that have been popping up in the wake of our electoral calamity as well as dozens of candidates at all levels of government. I find so much hope in the new wave of leaders and builders who are standing up during these times and I want to be there to support them. I will have more to say about this in the days ahead, but, you know the drill.
I'm sure that this is a common sentiment out in the Valley, but it's really kinda distressing to see people with access to so much capital writing with such melodrama.
There's so much wrong at the local level--homelessness, education, people broke with medical problems--and yet these folks seem a lot more concerned with a strawman oppression.
This is not a strawman, this is real and it's worth fighting.
So are the other things you mention, but everyone is free to pick their fight.
And if these people come from a philosophical and cultural and political monoculture, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious about them. FWIW, I feel the same way about the energy execs and crooked politicians--except in the case of at least Trump, there is at least a mandate of government granted by the people that voted for him.
Who, exactly, voted for these millionaires? Nobody.
At the end of the day, I personally care about actions and how they stack up against my personal ethical and moral compass. You are obviously free to use whatever method you want to decide if someone is doing good in the world. And yes, Sacca is free to spend his money however he likes. I also support Rebekah Mercer's right to spend her money on vicious attack ads. I don't have to respect her for it -- regardless of who won the election -- and you don't have to respect Chris Sacca.
Regarding monocultures -- circumscribe a set tightly enough and everyone comes from a monoculture. I don't think Sacca is any less exposed to divergent viewpoints than the Mercer's are, to use a relevant example.
And finally, just to respond to your overarching argument that Sacca has some responsibility to use his money in a particular way. He may believe so, and that wouldn't make it any more your business how he does it. And if he chooses to spend it on wine, art, and yacht collecting because that's what he wants to do with it we can both believe he can do better (Larry Ellison, if you're reading this: you can do better) -- but the society we live in hasn't made us the arbiters of good billionaire behavior, more's the pity. :)
My overarching argument is not quite that Sacca has a responsibility to use his money in a particular way--it's more that I find it distressing that powerful people (that arguably should know better) seem to have gotten caught up in the zeitgeist of the times and aren't being more conservative (in the "wait, let's stop and think about what we're actually advocating and how that could play out") and open-minded (in the "wait, maybe these other points of view are simply different and not always wrong").
I feel the same way about folks on the other side--they just tend not to show up on HN as much.
More people voted for Not Trump than voted for Trump.
However, Chris' access to capital, which equates to power in America, makes it more successful for him to fight on the federal level. trump in the white house has emboldened local behavior that threatens our education/healthcare systems, the homeless and countless other social safety net related issues. There are plenty of us left who can bring the fight on the local level. I'm coming around to the idea that winning the larger fights is also important.
I've not heard of Chris Sacca before reading this article. He appears to be that rare person with an understanding of the social obligations of wealth and the means to build some larger communities around that.
Action at the large levels is remote and indistinct, and boils down to status signalling and rich people games.
Paying for housing and food and shelter and schooling and grants and libraries and hospitals goes a hell of a lot farther...just see the good works of Carnegie and Kaiser, to name two.
Here's an interesting read you may enjoy along similar lines: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-dem...
Different things concern different people.
For that reason, I don't disagree that there's a lot wrong at the local level, and in many ways any action you could personally take would be better taken at such a level where you can create real impact.
That said, I'm not sure it's at all melodramatic when you consider the tone that the "leader of the free world" sets in terms of what's socially acceptable, how to treat others, and so on. And I don't mean in the sense of "oh, anti-Semitic attacks are up 13.5%!" -- there is SO much that can be fudged in compiling this kind of data. I mean more in the sense of "suddenly it's acceptable to be an unrepentant outright liar every hour of the day, and people will not just look past it, but literally disbelieve their own ears."
Then again, how much progress did SF make on homelessness under Obama?
edit: oooh, definitely a touchy subject around here ;)
Bubble prediction is a difficult game to play.
Read Antifragile book
I think it's been pretty established he got in super early on Twitter and made a ton of money, but I don't know about the Uber or Instagram.
I sound like a hater, but just because you "invested in" those companies doesn't mean you made money or were a smart investor.
http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/exclusive-is-this-the-best-per...
Possibly the best VC fund of all time.
Chris made a lot of money and he did a lot of interesting things. He's interesting and a lot was luck and a lot was skill. That said, Twitter (if he exited a bit post IPO was the companies big win. You only need one though.
Edit: Forgot about Instagram. He crushed it. Point is more Uber might not be as big, but his track record is amazing compared to other shops
I don't have any affection for Sacca, don't know him, don't care about him, etc. But he's factually been an incredible investor and it's just weird to see concerted effort to dispute that for no reason. He could be all sorts of negative things but he was a hell of a seed investor and that's in the books and he's got the receipts.
The one thing I would say is that he is pretty flashy and a bit of a braggard which many are; but going on SharkTank was a bit much. Guy has been super successful objectively my point was just that (to me, subjectively) it sort of feels like he's an entertainer more than an investor and values the fame and spotlight more than tech. Obviously his motivation doesn't matter vs. The track record but if I am critical of him it's just that it feels off vs. people like Steve Jurvetson or Horowitz who value innovation, technology and are happy to promote that above themselves
"These oppressive zealots in the White House"
"fighting a despotic regime"
Of course he can have an opinion, and it seems like everyone's got one. It's less clear why the reader should care. And statements like this:
"My career would not have progressed without the leadership and contributions of immigrants of virtually every race, ethnicity, and faith. Period."
I mean, there are a lot of races, ethnicities, and faiths in the world, and not all of them care to immigrate. The hyperbole just smacks of virtue signaling, which some people enjoy and others don't. Depends on how you react to the signal, I suppose.
Why is everything that democrats/liberal say deemed "virtue signaling" now? Do liberals have any genuine principles at all? Are some liberals signaling these virtues to other liberals who genuinely have principles, or is "virtue signaling all the way down"?
(BTW, I'm not American and don't identify neither as liberal or conservative)
The principle they adhere to most strongly is that the ends justify the means. Virtually everything they do flows from that.
Of course, that leaves the questions of what the ends are, and whether their means will effect them. From recent history, it would seem that the answer to the latter is, to some degree, yes. However, there is now significant pushback, leading to further polarization on both sides. The two sides do not ultimately desire the same ends, although many politicians claim that they do in order to establish a "moderate" position and retain their seats.
We may be in for some rough times ahead, politically. However, the Constitution has seen us through worse; as long as it is respected by those in office, we will ultimately come out intact. But I'm afraid that is not a given, since one side now sees the Constitution as "living" and evolving to meet the interpretations that will help effect their ends. If only they would pursue the amendment process instead of...creative interpretation.
You'd rather he signaled vice?
I've noticed that my liberal friends have even gravitated toward this leftist propaganda that the other side is made up of bad people. It's part of their core and part of their strategy to divide and conquer. If the other side is made of bad people - then your side will never leave you. In fact they won't even engage in discussion with opposing viewpoints.
We have historical examples of evil and destructive regimes being legitimately elected. It's not impossible.
Sacca claims we are observing another example, right now, in America.
Your comment says destructive and evil in the same sentence. Again - being destructive or making bad calls - doesn't make you a bad person or evil. Incompetent yes; evil probably not. Every politician does destructive things, especially when those things are often subjective based on your philosophy.
The equivalent on the right is when they say that their opposition hates America because they have different perspectives and want to drastically change things. That's not cool either.
What's interesting is that if you look at history, the leftists are by far the most evil (Mao, Stalin, etc) and it's not even close. Evil is not a word that should be thrown around loosely like the leftists do daily.
My understanding is that Chris isn't the nicest guy in the world, so perhaps he's doing entrepreneurs a favor by backing other VC's. Some of his capital will still be out backing startups, but their founders won't have to put up with him personally.
Does anyone know where (or how) to find these organizations?
I'd love to get involved in some of these organizations that are trying to build a better future for our country, and try to contribute/help in any way that I can.
I don't really understand why this is so objectionable.
Good on him. I sometimes wonder why more people who are insanely rich don't just retire and spend the rest of their lives doing something else...or doing nothing. I think of the C-level execs in my own company--they each have so much that they and their families for generations could literally do nothing for the rest of their lives and still continue to get richer via interest. Why go on working?
Because in the workplace they can abuse and mistreat people, play their power games etc.
Money isn't everything.
That said, I feel getting involved in political issues is mostly a losing situation because your power (even the power of the president as we've seen perhaps thankfully in the past 90 days is highly limited) to get something accomplished is so limited. Also, the solution to most problems is not new laws or new politics. I remember a professor at my college spent years getting the exam dates shifted three days earlier from a Tuesday to a Friday...that's the speed & work of politics, frustrating.
That's three days later. Or four days earlier.