Chris Sacca
66 statements across 17 episodes · 33 bullish · 11 bearish · 13 people on the record · first statement Jun 1, 2015 by Jason Calacanis · said 121 times in 35 episodes since 2015 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Chris Sacca's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (47), Matt Mazzeo (28), Jason Calacanis (10), Tim Ferriss (3), Ryan Sarver (3), Ron Bouganim (3), Justin Caldbeck (3), Jason Lemkin (3)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Tim Ferriss: Why I Walked Away From Angel Investing After Uber | How I Accidentally Lost $150 Million | Money Fixed My Problems—Then Made Me Miserable
- Predictions for 2026: Top Buy & Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win & NVIDIA’s Challenges · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Will Cursor Kill Figma? Lightspeed Raises $9B & OpenAI’s $1B from Disney & #1 App in App Store · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2023 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
- Adam Besnivick: How to Invest in Pre-Seed & Seed Stage Companies; Looking Glass Capital | E1020 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Homebrew’s Hunter Walk & Satya Patel: Why $100M is Not Enough to Execute a Seed Strategy | 20VC #972 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Nico Wittenborn: Consumer Subscription Apps; Using Evolutionary Biology to Invest; Solo GP's | E1017 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 10 mentions in 7 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Why the Traditional Seed Fund Model No Longer Works, Why Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed Bring Signaling Risk but also Less Pressure, The One Criteria All Potential Sales Hires Need to Have and The Clear Signs of 10x Sales Hires with Jason Lemki
- 20VC: Why You Should Think Twice Before Taking Multi-Stage Money at Seed, Why Venture Has Never Been Less Collaborative, How Becoming a Parent Made Me a Better Investor and Why We Should Be Optimistic About the Future of Diversity in Venture with Deena Sh
- 20VC: 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki on How To Approach Trust in Business and Personal Relationships, Leadership Lessons from Sheryl Sandberg and Reflections on How The Best Founders Manage Their Boards
- Tony Fadell: Why You Can't Be a Solo Founder; Mercenary vs. Missionary Operators | 20VC #910 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Gary Vee: My First 3 Angel Investments; Why I Changed My Mind on Facebook Video | 20VC #899 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
- 20VC: Lessons Scaling Insight Partners to a $20BN Latest Fund, The Two Biggest Learnings on Price, How to Manage and Train Young People in Venture, Why Business Classrooms Do Not Work and How to Assess the Two Commodities in Life; Money and Time with Jeff
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Moxxie Ventures' Katie Stanton on What It Takes To Raise A First Time Fund As A Solo GP, The Entrance of Multi-Stage Funds Into Seed Rounds and The Inverse Relationship of Those That Fund Diverse Managers and Those That Say They Do
- 20VC: Sahil Lavingia on Rolling Funds and Their Impact on The Future of Venture, How To Evaluate Market, Team and Product, The Value of Party Rounds & The Pros and Cons of Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 10 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
- 20VC: The 2 Core Roles Played By The Best Seed Investors Today, What To Look For In Potential Co-Investors & Why Seed Funds Can Grow Ownership in Their Best Companies Across Rounds with Ron Bouganim, Founder @ Govtech Fund
- 20VC: ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman on Betting His Career Facebook Would Be A $10Bn Company, Lessons From Travis and Uber on Scaling A Global Marketplace & Whether Growth and Capital Efficiency Are Mutually Exclusive
- 20VC: Why Founders Should Not Always Be Raising, How To Build Relationships with VCs In A Condensed Timeframe, Why The Founder To VC Relationship Is Not Like A Marriage with Dave Vasen, Founder & CEO @ Brightwheel
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Why Convertible Notes Are Ridiculous, Why Party Rounds Are Bad For Both Founder and Investor & Why Pro-Rata Rights Are A Mess with David Waxman, Founding Partner @ TenOneTen Ventures
- 20VC: Jason Calacanis on The 4 Questions Investors Must Ask Founders, Whether YC Have Scaled Their Process Successfully & Why Early Founder Liquidity Is Good Not Bad
- 20VC: Why Every Founder Should Bootstrap Their Startup, How To Solve Information Asymmetry Between Founders and VCs & Living In A Cupboard For Two Years To Fund StyleSeat with Melody McCloskey, Founder & CEO @ StyleSeat
- 20VC: SaaStr's Jason Lemkin on The 3 Things You Want From Your LPs, Why Most VCs Do Not Add Value & Why The Best VCs Know How To Package Startups For The Next Round
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 59 mentions in 6 episodes 10 per episode
- 20VC: Lowercase's Matt Mazzeo on Being Chris Sacca's Partner and The 3 KPIs to Successful Investing
- 20VC: Raising A Solo GP Fund & Why They Are So Prominent Today with Charles Hudson, Managing Partner @ Precursor Ventures
- 20VC: Binary's Justin Caldbeck on Specialisation Being Key To Success In VC, The Biggest Problem In VC Today and Why The Future Is A Moneyless Barter Economy
- 20VC: Do VC's Really Hustle Enough? The Takeaways From Watching Twitter Scale From 30 to 2,500 & Why Chris Sacca Is Like Yoda with Ryan Sarver, Partner @ Redpoint
- 20VC: Why The Whole Industry Is Backward Looking, The Best Funds Are Entrepreneur Led and Venture Is All About Access with Alex Bangash, Founder @ Trusted Insight
- 20VC: From Netscape To Friendster To Nuzzel: Jonathan Abrams on A Silicon Valley Adventure
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Everything said about Chris Sacca, oldest first
Jun 1, 2015 positive
Jan 27, 2016 positive
Mar 14, 2016 positive
Mazzeo: Chris Sacca walked away from tens of millions over 'icky' deals
“Watched him walk away from tens of millions of dollars repeatedly because he didn't feel right about, and it felt icky to him in that investment. Actually, that's the only, like, that's the only red flag no black ball that we have is if an investment makes us …”
May 9, 2016 positive
Early Micro-VC Returns Gave LPs Confidence to Back Solo GPs
“I actually think that there's a lower threshold because people like Jeff, Steve Anderson, Chris Saka, and others showed that you could take a small amount of capital. And actually turn it into meaningful returns. I think the fact that they proved that those ea…”
Jul 20, 2016 negative
Sep 14, 2016 positive
Sarver: Chris Sacca is like Yoda for venture and career advice
“And then I think kind of in our industry Chris Saka has been a close friend and probably the person I go to the most for kind of personal and career advice. And I've always said he's kind of like Yoda. He always kind of deploys like the best most personal advi…”
Nov 7, 2016 positive
Mar 31, 2017
Oct 29, 2018 positive
Jan 27, 2020 positive
Aug 24, 2020
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Oct 11, 2021
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Sacca: Climate technology is the largest addressable market in human history
“These are the biggest total addressable markets in the history of the fucking world, because it turns out, like, the total addressable market is everyone who eats, and everyone who wants to move their bodies somewhere around the planet, and everyone who wants …”
Oct 11, 2021 positive
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Oct 11, 2021
Oct 11, 2021 positive
Oct 11, 2021
Sacca: Treat market success as luck and failure as a personal flaw
“When things are going up, you tend to think it's correlated with your genius and talent, and when things are going down, you tend to think it's unlucky. You learn over time to invert that curve. When things are going up, it's lucky, and when things are going d…”
Oct 11, 2021
Early Google shared board decks company-wide with zero leaks for four years
“Google taught me that when they would share confidential information, they would share the board deck with the entire company on Fridays. Literally, they'd gather the entire company and show them the same slides they had shown the board on Wednesday. And that …”
Oct 11, 2021 positive
Sacca's first angel check was Photobucket, which sold for $330 million
“The very first one I did on my own was a company called PhotoBucket, which we ultimately sold for three hundred thirty million dollars, which sounded like all the money in the world at the time. You know, Flickr had sold for like 25 to thirty five million doll…”
Oct 11, 2021
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Oct 11, 2021 negative
Oct 11, 2021 positive
Sacca: Lowercarbon will only hire candidates with service or manual labor experience
“And our organization will only hire people who have had shitty jobs, who've had service jobs, who've worked extremely hard for some point in their life, and who appreciate that the worst day of being a VC doesn't begin to compare to the worst day of working in…”
Oct 11, 2021 neutral
Oct 11, 2021 negative
Oct 11, 2021 neutral
Oct 11, 2021 positive
Sacca: Four VC firms committed to joining Lowercarbon's HBCU access initiative
“And so far we have four other firms who are going to follow us along and start giving more access, whether it's donated interests or it's, or no fee, no carry exposure to HBCUs to start participating in this ecosystem more meaningfully.”
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Solugen reached a nine-figure run rate with 50% to 60% margins
“A company, Solugen, industrial chemicals using enzymes instead of petroleum. Yes, their first VAT cost a lot of money, but they now are, you know, I don't know if I'allowed to say, but their run rate is ridiculous. Like, I'll fucking say it, like, nine-figure …”
Oct 11, 2021
Oct 11, 2021
Sacca stepped away from VC because he feared becoming a 'B-teamer'
“That's one of the reasons I quit for a while. Was I worried that, you know, the stage of life I was in, I wasn't going to be able to fucking bring it. I wasn't going to be able to as obsessive as you need to be to succeed in this business and this industry and…”
Oct 11, 2021 positive
Chris and Crystal Sacca backed dozens of underrepresented first-time GPs
“Crystal and I are LPs in dozens and dozens of funds, because that was one of the ways we paid it forward, you know, and to help kind of promote diversity in the industry, we backed Literally dozens of first time general partners who are women, people of color,…”
Oct 11, 2021 bullish
Heart Aerospace secured billions in airline orders on single-digit millions spent
“Fast forward a couple years, and not on the billions of dollars of investment it normally takes to develop an aircraft, but on the single digit millions of dollars in this case, and I think we just did a round in the tens of millions, and up until that round, …”
Oct 11, 2021 negative
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Jan 20, 2022 negative
Jan 20, 2022
Chris Sacca day-traded student loans to $12M before losing it all
“So I very famously took my student loan checks for law school, told the school they hadn't shown up, cash them, and use them to day trade in the market. And so this is one of the reasons why I get so nervous about what I see in the Robin Hood phenomenon. You k…”
Jan 20, 2022 negative
Jan 20, 2022
Kevin Systrom specifically targeted Sacca, D'Angelo, and Dorsey for Instagram's angel round
“Instagram came to me, but like Kevin Systrom literally said, I want three angels, you, Adam D'Angelo and Jack Dorsey. And so he pitched me. I literally was not seeking photos. I, it sounds fucking hilarious, but I thought it was spent. I thought it was done. A…”
Jan 20, 2022 bullish
Jan 20, 2022 neutral
Jan 20, 2022
Chris Sacca: Attribute investment upside to luck and downturns to personal talent deficit
“When things are, without that kind of quote unquote training that came by way of tragedy, when things are going up, you tend to think it's correlated with your genius and talent. And when things are going down, you tend to think it's unlucky. And you learn ove…”
Jan 20, 2022 negative
Jan 20, 2022
Jan 20, 2022 negative
Chris Sacca: Computer science graduates are out of touch with reality
“What happens is we have this monoculture of these kids who, in computer science programs now, they've never had a job. Like, the toughest job they've ever had was being a teaching assistant for a class, and so they've never mowed lawns, waited tables, worked i…”
Jan 20, 2022
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Chris Sacca's second angel investment was a $25,000 check into Twitter
“My second investment was Twitter, and that one was funny because Evan Williams was, I'd already been working with the company and helping him out, but Evan went and circled up investors for the round, and he's like, hey, I've got you down for 25 K, 25 K, good,…”
Jan 20, 2022
Lowercarbon Capital only hires people who have worked service or manual labor
“We in our organization will only hire people Who have had shitty jobs, who've had service jobs, who've worked extremely hard for some point in their life, and who appreciate that the worst day of being a VC doesn't begin to compare to the worst day of working …”
Jan 20, 2022 bullish
Jan 20, 2022 neutral
Chris Sacca: Rogue states will unilaterally deploy geoengineering if democracies do not
“And if we don't do it, You know, North Korea is going to do it on their own. Like, some rogue state is going to launch a projectile that explodes a bunch of dust in the atmosphere, and we won't know which dust, which altitude, and the best ways to do it, and w…”
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Chris and Crystal Sacca are LPs in dozens of funds led by diverse GPs
“Crystal and I are LPs in dozens and dozens of funds, Because that was one of the ways we paid it forward, you know, and to help kind of promote diversity in the industry, we backed literally dozens of first-time general partners who are women, people of color,…”
Jan 20, 2022 bearish
Jan 20, 2022 positive
Sacca: Shark Tank is completely unscripted with zero advance info on pitches
“Shark Tank's real. Like, just so you know that none of that is scripted. It's the most authentic show on television. They don't tell us what to say or, and we invest our own money. We don't know anything about those companies before they walk in the door.”
Jan 20, 2022
Chris Sacca funded his first $50,000 angel investment using credit cards
“But that check I wrote was literally a credit card check for me. I didn't have any cash on hand. I was at Google, and I was vesting, but I hadn't sold any stock yet, and so I literally I went into that one with 50,000 dollars of credit card checks.”
May 4, 2022
Sacca: Travis Kalanick was ousted by 13 Uber managers, not VCs
“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter and said, dude, you gotta stay out of the company. You know, that's really the only force that Silicon Valley leader…”
May 4, 2022 positive
Sacca: Lowercarbon will only hire people who worked service or labor jobs
“And our organization will only hire people who have had shitty jobs, who've had service jobs, who've worked extremely hard for some point in their life, and who appreciate the worst day of being a VC doesn't begin to compare to the worst day.”
May 4, 2022
Oct 28, 2022 negative
Sacca: Buying multiple houses made us prisoners to our possessions
“In the beginning, I made a bunch of money and I bought houses for Family and multiple houses for ourselves, and then my wife and I turn around and we're like, fuck, we're property managers. Our inbox is like, hey, this broke, and this is happening, and what do…”
Oct 28, 2022 positive
Sacca interviewed dysfunctional wealthy families to avoid their money mistakes
“So when it became clear, we are going to make some money. We just sat down with a bunch of people who had been through that process. And by the way, not just the successful people. We intentionally sat down with people whose marriages had completely dissolved,…”
May 29, 2023 positive
Besvinick: Reputation is the only asset investors 100% control
“Reputation is the number one currency as an investor that you have control over. The other one obviously is your track record, but you and I both know that To a certain extent that's out of the investor's control. You know, we can hopefully select great founde…”
Jan 13, 2025 bullish
Pishevar turned $25,000 into $4 million investing in Lowercase Capital
“I would say it would be lowercase Chris Saka's fund. I put, you know, a little check in there and got four million out like, 25,000 turned into four million, so it was a legendary fund. I think it was like ten million and returned like 1.5000000000 or somethin…”