Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Chris Sacca

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Chris Sacca.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
Chris Sacca

Christopher Sacca 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. 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.

American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.
Travis Kalanick was and is the perfect person to lead Uber, a product I knew from day one was going to be big.
There I was - 20 years old, living in Ireland, and I'd never heard the word 'venture capitalist.' But I'd said that I wanted a job that involved a lot of negotiation, a lot of yelling at people on the phone, and for it to be high-risk, high-reward.
I wasn't put on the Earth only to be an investor. That wasn't my only thing in life. The problem is that as you get good at something and you keep getting better at something, more and more people just know you as that, and they have you in that box.
I have one of the self-driving Teslas; it drives itself periodically. It's a marvel of science, but it's still frightening. I think we've got a while before regulators and the general public wrap their heads around the path that will lead to the ubiquity of driverless cars. There's no doubt Uber will be a leader in that space.
When you get into investing, your default stance should be 'No,' because most deals suck. Most deals won't make money. Most companies will fail. — © Chris Sacca
When you get into investing, your default stance should be 'No,' because most deals suck. Most deals won't make money. Most companies will fail.
The United States... is the greatest nation on Earth, and I believe there are things that make us special - and one is this grand democratic experiment.
They are desperate for surrogates to get behind Trump, and they can't find anyone who has actually had genuine success who is willing to stand behind him. That is because he is all smoke and mirrors. We know he doesn't have all the money he claims he has.
I've learned that it's often the less obvious, yet pervasive and questionable, everyday behaviors of men in our industry that collectively make it inhospitable for women.
In social settings, under the guise of joking, being collegial, flirting, or having a good time, I undoubtedly caused some women to question themselves, retreat, feel alone, and worry they can't be their authentic selves.
When you're fundraising for a venture fund, you're supposed to not talk.
There is a greed case for diversity. Diverse perspectives bring us into markets we didn't know existed.
I think our election proved to us that 'billionaire' is an incredibly magical word in our language in that people just defer to it. Donald Trump is not a billionaire, but he knew it was vital for him to be perceived as one.
I really do see the sharks evolving their perspective. In the early days of the show, if you brough them an app, they would've turned their noses up. But now they know how indispensable those apps are, even to their own traditional businesses.
Once my ears were open to hearing mentions of 'Shark Tank', I was surprised by how many people in our world, even in our industry, tech and finance, loved the show.
A great idea can't succeed without a great operator. But rarely can a great operator squeak by with a bad idea. So, as pithy as it sounds to say 'It's all about the people,' I only invest when I think I have found the right team for the right business.
I've yet to see an example of somebody standing up to Donald Trump and suggesting policy initiatives and him embracing them yet. It's not happening at scale. — © Chris Sacca
I've yet to see an example of somebody standing up to Donald Trump and suggesting policy initiatives and him embracing them yet. It's not happening at scale.
The day after Donald Trump was elected, Chinese business leaders, including the heads of Baidu, stood up and gave a speech saying, 'Come to China and build your company now.' The cognitive dissonance of that was amazing for some of us to think we might be losing our leadership role in building companies.
Planet colonization is not a short term concern of mine. The physical limitations of space travel render it low on the list for me.
Facebook is who you used to know; Twitter is who you want to know and things you want to know more about.
When I posted the 8,500 words on what Twitter should be, I wanted to make clear this wasn't a vision statement for the future. What was so frustrating about it is that's what it should've been already.
How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?
I don't drink coffee. Weird, I know. But I try to stay away from caffeine. That said, we are investors in Blue Bottle, which is delicious!
Just don't spend your money, and you're well on your way to becoming a millionaire.
The passive acceptance of exclusionary words and deeds is not okay.
Simplicity is hard to build, easy to use, and hard to charge for. Complexity is easy to build, hard to use, and easy to charge for.
Twitter is 'Black Twitter'. That is a brand that 'Black Twitter' has given itself. That's where the hashtags happen... where the excitement is.
It is very hip to be an angel investor now. There used to be a dozen, two dozen guys at these demo days writing checks. Now there are hundreds.
I don't have a boss or PR person, so I'm accountable to no one.
The old economy with careers and benefits and pensions is gone. There are scary implications to that.
Ride-sharing is one of the biggest math problems that's ever been approached, that's ever been attempted to be solved.
Effective storytelling is the key to getting users to understand and adopt your product as well as imperative to recruiting team members and future investors.
The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.
I literally should go to a Twitter therapist, just the 10 years of stress and trauma with this company.
'Shark Tank' has been a sincere joy. As our traditional venture-backed companies get bigger, the investing side tends to get more political and complicated. 'Shark Tank' takes me back to my early days working with ambitious founders in their earliest and scrappiest days. The show reminds me of what I deeply love about this business.
I have definitely refocused Lowercase Capital on later-stage deals and my existing portfolio.
A deep appreciation for politics comes from empathy for our fellow human beings and their diverse paths through life.
2009 was one of the busiest, most insane, stressful periods in my entire career. I was raising a bunch of money, buying a bunch of Twitter. I saw my friend fired as CEO of Twitter. Uber was growing like a weed. As these companies get bigger and bigger, there's more and more friction. Being public was the last thing I wanted to do at the time.
Shark Tank's participatory. There's so many people on Twitter for this show, and they all feel like they're in the tank, making calls on this stuff.
I spent a lot of time learning how to define myself internally rather than externally. I learned how to care less about external validation. I think that's given me a renewed confidence in speaking out loud. I kind of don't care what people think about me. I feel a lot more confident in saying what I believe.
When someone comes in with a product they want in Bed Bath & Beyond, that's way out of my comfort zone. — © Chris Sacca
When someone comes in with a product they want in Bed Bath & Beyond, that's way out of my comfort zone.
Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.
I may be the only shark who hasn't been on QVC, but I have learned a lot from those folks about what it takes to get a product on store shelves.
I succeeded at venture capital because, for years, I rarely thought about or spent time on anything else. Anything less than that unmitigated full commitment leaves me feeling frustrated and ineffective.
I think there wouldn't be a Net neutrality debate in this country if we really had a competitive environment for access.
There simply isn't a way to do the show without investing in a bunch more companies.
I want broadband to grow, more mobile devices available, particularly in underprivileged communities. I want STEM education to go ahead and fund the next generation of engineers.
One of the things that technology has is a direct relationship with its users. We talk about newspapers. But the biggest newspapers in the world right now are Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram.
One of my rules for investing is, I don't invest in a deal where I don't think I have an unfair advantage and where I don't think I can personally impact the outcome.
People get out ahead of themselves in debt with spending on all of their desires. But if you learn to live pretty simply and well, well under your means, you feel incredibly, incredibly rich, and that frees you up and gives you the option to start something new, to leave the job you're not excited about, where there might be a glass ceiling on you.
The better I get at investing in and helping companies, the result is more founders who are excited to work with me and more of my wonderful limited partners insisting I take piles of their loot to keep it all going.
Work at a place like Google for awhile: if you do an interview and you say all the right things, no one really cares. But the day you say the wrong sentence, it's attributed to 'Senior Google Executive,' and the stock moves, and everybody hates you.
When I was 20 years old, I was living in Ireland, going to school in Cork. There was this girl in my film class that I was kind of flirting with. We had this notebook that we passed back and forth. We would write 10 questions and then pass it back while we were supposedly paying attention.
I've definitely sold some Twitter shares. I don't own as many as I used to, because I'm not an idiot, but I own more than I should because I'm an idiot. — © Chris Sacca
I've definitely sold some Twitter shares. I don't own as many as I used to, because I'm not an idiot, but I own more than I should because I'm an idiot.
I'm good at what I do and still improving as I learn from mentors, founders, partners, friends, family, strangers, my own investors, and the experience itself.
Uber has an information advantage, a computational advantage. There's massive structural advantages to the player who's smartest about how to deploy cars, where to deploy cars, how to adjust pricing dynamics, how to ensure supply of drivers - the party that understands best the behavior of riders.
Being a cheap bastard now means so much more freedom and choices later.
Uber is a better company with better math, better predictive supply, better brand, lower pickup times, higher quality of service. They'll absolutely win.
When I first agreed to do 'Shark Tank,' they asked me to wear a suit, and I was just like, 'No. I can't. It'll end my career.'
I have learned a ton about inventory, co-packing, wholesaling, end caps. All these concepts are easy to breeze by in what I do for a living or assume that there is a marketing manager or specialist in one of our companies that handles that.
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