Chris Sacca, investor and philanthropist
Chris Sacca, the former head of Special Initiatives at Google, and now a Twitter and Facebook investor, is reportedly on the lookout for investors for a new fund he has launched for technology start-ups.
As well as Twitter, some of the companies he backs include Facebook; 1000memories, a site for organising and sharing old photos of people you love; the charitable fundraising tool Fundrise; Zencoder, the web-based video-encoding software-as-a-service; FanBridge, a fan relationship-management platform; plus the photo-sharing site Instagram.
So will he be eyeing up any Irish technology ventures via the new fund? He formerly attended University College Cork as part of his studies.
Bloomberg has reported that Sacca opened the new fund Lowercase Spur LP in late 2011 and is now seeking outside investors. Bloomberg said it had obtained a memo dated March 2012 and that the 39-page private-placement memorandum comprises a chart of 10 investments that Lowercase Spur has apparently already made, including one in the mobile Uber technologies, a new online car booking service that uses Google Maps API and GPS technology so people can check a car’s positioning via their mobile phones. Sacca is already an investor in Uber.
If you go on the Uber site today, you’ll see a tweet from Sacca on the homepage which reads: “I don’t always take sedans, but when I do, I use @uber. Stay in need of transportation, my friends. — @sacca”.
Bloomberg also said Sacca is aiming to close the new fund by the end of the month.
While employed at Google, Sacca founded and headed up the alternative access and wireless divisions. His most visible projects include Google’s 700MHz and TV white spaces spectrum initiatives, plus the company’s gdata centre in Oregon and Google’s free citywide Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, California.
Before joining Google, Sacca held executive roles at the streaming and digital media distribution company Speedera Networks. Before that he was a lawyer with the Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West.
In 2008, Sacca worked on US President Barack Obama’s campaign as a telecommunications, media and technology adviser, amongst other roles.
Charity: water is one of the causes that Sacca supports, as well as the Tony Hawk Foundation and Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Foundation.
