Opinion
Sacca: No reason to hire a financial analyst again after GPT-4
“I don't know why I'd hire a financial analyst again. It's a job I value, but at the same time, this thing in moments spit back compound annual growth rate analysis.”
Opinion
Sacca: Akamai's fraud allegations against Speedera were 'trumped up garbage'
“Their primary competitor, Akamai, had accused them of all kinds of computer fraud and abuse stuff that was just
Totally trumped up garbage.”
Assertion Partly supported
Sacca: Google's $6B spectrum bid established net neutrality rules for wireless networks
“We went from zero to within a year bidding six billion dollars on spectrum and attaching openness rules to wireless spectrum. That's why the wireless networks are net neutral. It was because of this big hand of poker we'd played.”
Insight
Sacca: Founders who do not help clean dishes lack startup empathy
“If they couldn't empathize with the host, how can I be helpful? Then it just shows somebody who is not equipped to build a startup because a startup is constantly about empathizing with your customer and your user, and then showing how can I make it easier for…”
Disclosure
Sacca: Lowercarbon Capital is not concessionary; partners are largest LPs
“This is not concessionary capital. Crystal and I are the biggest investors in our fund. We are in this to make a lot of money.”
Insight
Sacca: Removing Carbon From Any Process Inherently Makes It Cheaper
“So anytime we remove carbon from a process, it just gets cheaper. Carbon has an inherent value. It's necessary for a lot of the stuff we do, And it has a monetary value. And so any way we could take it out of building a product or running a service, we just ha…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sacca: AI has turned nuclear fusion progress into a vertical curve
“AI and machine learning had so greatly accelerated progress in fusion that it was geometric now. It was a vertical curve. Because experiments used to take one to two years to run one experiment in a fusion reactor. Now they could run in high fidelity in the co…”
Disclosure
Sacca passed on Dropbox and Airbnb due to competition and safety fears
“I told the Dropbox guys that Google was going to crush them because we already had G Drive internally. I told the Airbnb guys that somebody was going to get raped or murdered and the blood was going to be on their hands when they were renting out a room in som…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sacca: Lowercarbon's Fund 7.81 will remove 7.81 gigatons of carbon
“We call that one 7.81 because we believe with that fund, we'll be able to pull 7.81 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere. And when we do so, we will reduce the parts per million in the atmosphere by one.”
Assertion Partly supported
Sacca: Lowercarbon's Swedish electric airplane startup has billions in orders
“We have an electric airplane company in Sweden that even Bill Gates said was going to be impossible. It's a 35 seat plane that's got billions of dollars of cash on the barrel orders. And the majors have invested in the company because it's just cheaper to oper…”
Disclosure
Sacca: We manage for return multiples, not IRR, and avoid credit lines
“I don't manage for IRR. I manage for multiples. So we don't run a line of credit, for instance. That would be a much better way to eke out another point of IRR, but that's not how I want to run the business.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Sacca: GPT-5 will train in 2023 and be 6-8x better than GPT-4
“GPT five will be trained this year, and it'll be six to eight times better than four, maybe, maybe more.”
Opinion
Sacca: Silicon Valley judges talent on ideas rather than seniority
“I saw Silicon Valley as the place that was most based on merit and least on seniority. Being in DC, you get exposed to politics, and politics is so much about have you earned your keep? Have you put in the time? Have you served? Have you risen up through the r…”
Insight
Sacca: Best founders project calm inevitability of success, not aggressive pitching
“When you spoke with them, even as the company was in its earliest days, they spoke with the voice of the inevitability of the growth and success of the company. And they weren't selling you. It wasn't that their heart rate rose, and they were trying to convinc…”
Disclosure
Sacca: Retired Lowercase Capital in 2016 at the peak of bankability
“When I retired lowercase, it was probably the most bankable I was. We walked away. Crystal and I retired it in 2016 to just say, This doesn't feel as compelling anymore for us personally. We don't love the impact we're having.”
Disclosure
Sacca: Lowercarbon stopped investing in carbon accounting software
“We don't really invest in carbon accounting software or anything anymore. And we realized, A, we're not that great at it. There are a lot of other people out there in the world who are better at SaaS than we are. And B, a lot of VCs came out of being locked up…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sacca: Minus Coffee beats all brands except Blue Bottle in taste tests
“It is so absolutely delicious. It beats everything but Blue Bottle now in taste tests. Stumptown, Pete's, it knocks them all out. All the hipster coffee. Blue Bottle's the only one at Cancer Mount, but it's made using no coffee.”
Opinion
Sacca: Female entrepreneurs face a higher bar due to cultural discrimination
“I think female entrepreneurs right now have a higher bar because of cultural norms and discrimination against women.”
Insight
Sacca: Free markets are the most powerful solution for climate change
“Bless the activists and everybody else who cares about it. But I actually think the market is the most powerful solution to the stuff we're doing. And I think for the very first time in my life, I can have a massive impact on the planet while also making a ton…”
Disclosure
Sacca: I avoid socializing with other VCs because they cloud my thinking
“I don't hang out with other VCs. I feel like they cloud my thinking.”
Insight
Sacca: Focusing on negative downside over upside cost billions of dollars
“So the one mistake that I think has cost me billions of dollars is focusing on the negative case for an investment and not the positive likelihood.”
Disclosure
Sacca turned student loans into $12M before going $4M in debt
“And I took my student loans and I turned them into twelve million dollars. But that twelve million dollars I didn't send. I just kept rolling it back in and held material positions in these two stocks. And then within a 10 day period, I say it's black swan, bu…”
Disclosure
Sacca: Invested $25K into Twitter while employed at Google
“I wrote a check into Twitter while I was still at Google for 25 K. And that was one of the things I needed that money back. So I would show up at the company and work my ass off to try and make it more valuable because that wasn't break off 25 to be polite sit…”
Insight
Sacca: Early angel deals fail when backing fixable companies over great ones
“The first few deals I did with my own individual money once I got out as an investor were garbage because they would come pitch me
and I'm like, oh, I know how I can make this better because that's what I was used to doing at Google was just making things bett…”
Chris Sacca