The best investors are learners rather than teachers. Micro venture
capitalist Chris Sacca
is one of Silicon
Valley’s most thoughtful learners – a former lawyer and failed
entrepreneur, once Head of Special Initiatives at Google, an early
investor in Twitter with his own 1.3 million person following, a 2009 TechCrunch
Crunchie Award nomination for Best Angel Investor, an Obama insider and
activist, a keen bicyclist and skier, and the owner of the most colorful
collection of cowboy shirts in the Valley.
I first met Chris a couple of years ago at the Silicon Valley Comes to
Oxford, an event in which
the best minds of the Valley educate Oxford students about technology
innovation and business creativity. What I liked about him then, as now,
was his pugnacious humility, his very vivid memories of failure and
poverty, his uniquely American optimism, and his unashamed commitment to
global social justice.
The Wall Street Journal cited Sacca as “possibly the most influential businessman in America”. But what they forgot to add was that he’s also amongst the most provocative businessman in this country – a perennial start-up guy who can cram more ideas into a five minute interview than most corporate execs can come up with in a lifetime
