Chris Sacca (Lowercarbon Capital) - Cleantech 2.0

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alongside his wife Crystal, Chris Sacca built Lowercase Capital into an extraordinarily successful VC firm, leveraging very early-stage investments in transformational technology companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe. He retired in 2017, but came out of retirement to head up the science and investing team at Lowercarbon Capital, which is pursuing ambitious solutions to the climate crisis through innovation in energy, building materials, transportation, food, industrial chemicals, reforestation, and more. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Sacca discusses how he found such success in early-stage investing, and explains why he thinks we’re entering a golden age of tech-driven climate solutions.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Who you are defines how you build.
0:06.8	This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader series.
0:10.6	Brought to you by Stanford E-Corner.
0:14.4	Welcome YouTube and Stanford communities to the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader seminar.
0:20.4	I am Ravi Balani, the director of
0:22.6	Alchemist, an accelerator for enterprise startups, and a lecture in the management science and
0:27.5	engineering department at Stanford. Today, we are thrilled to welcome Chris Zaka to Stanford and to
0:34.7	ETL. Chris is the co-founder and managing partner of lower carbon capital and an accomplished venture
0:42.1	investor, which is an understatement.
0:43.6	Chris was number two on the Forbes list of the top venture capitalists.
0:47.9	He's also a company advisor and entrepreneur and manages a portfolio of startups through
0:52.9	his firm lowercase capital. Alongside his wife,
0:56.4	Crystal, he built lowercase around very early stage investments in transformational tech
1:01.7	companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, Docker, Optimizely, Stripe. It goes on and on and on,
1:09.0	the list. Chris famously retired in 2017, and we'll talk about
1:14.0	that, to focus on healing the climate, restoring American democracy, promoting diversity within tech
1:19.6	and VC, and reforming the criminal justice system. Chris grew up in an Irish, Italian American family
1:26.7	outside of Buffalo, New York.
1:28.4	He earned his bachelor's degree in humanities for all humanities and social sciences majors.
1:33.4	Chris is a fellow humanities and international affairs major and got his JD from Georgetown.
1:39.1	He also famously used his student loans, always an entrepreneur, in undergrad to start a hedge fund where he
1:45.0	parlayed a $20,000 loan into $12 million, and then subsequently parlayed that into $4 million of
	...

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