Chris Sacca is the co-founder of Lowercarbon Capital and an accomplished venture investor, company advisor, and entrepreneur, managing a portfolio of countless technology, communication, and consumer product startups through his firm Lowercase Capital. Alongside his wife Crystal, Chris grew Lowercase — primarily known for its investments in very early-stage technology companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, Docker, Optimizely, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Stripe — into one of history’s most successful funds ever.
The performance of the Lowercase funds made Chris one of the then youngest members of the Forbes Midas List in 2011 and vaulted him to the number two spot as well as earned him a spot on Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list before his shift from broad-based venture capital in 2017 to focus on investing in entrepreneurial approaches to healing the climate, restoring American democracy, promoting diversity within technology and venture capital, and reforming the criminal justice system among other activist, political, and philanthropic pursuits.
These days, Chris heads a science and investing team at Lowercarbon Capital pursuing the world’s most ambitious solutions to the climate crisis that is threatening all life on the planet. Across the realms of energy, building materials, transportation, food, industrial chemicals, reforestation, and all of the underlying logistics, Lowercarbon is showing the world that focusing on climate solutions is just good business. In parallel with this work, Chris and Crystal have become some of the nation’s most prolific supporters of non-profit climate research.
Before setting out as an investor, Chris served as Head of Special Initiatives at Google, Inc. In that role, he founded and headed up Google’s Access division where his projects included Google’s multi-billion dollar 700MHz and TV white spaces spectrum initiatives, including leading Google’s participation in their $4.7 billion FCC spectrum auction bidding. Chris co-led the siting and acquisition of the company’s groundbreaking data centers in Oregon, Georgia, and the Netherlands, and helped propel the company’s global fiber-optic and undersea cable footprint, and Google’s free citywide municipal WiFi network in Mountain View, CA.
Chris also spearheaded many of Google’s business development and M&A transactions and was on the founding team of the company’s New Business Development division. Chris was further responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars and euros worth of domestic and international governmental joint ventures including some of the tech industry’s early clean energy initiatives. In recognition of his accomplishments, Chris was among the first Google employees ever given the Founders’ Award, Google’s highest internal honor.
Earlier in his career, Chris was an attorney at the Silicon Valley firm of Fenwick & West, where he handled venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, and licensing transactions for technology and research companies both in the US and abroad. After Fenwick, Chris served in various executive roles, including General Counsel and Head of Corporate Development, at one of the world’s largest streaming and digital media companies, Speedera Networks, which was acquired by Akamai Technologies.
Chris has spent more than a decade as a fixture on television, radio, podcasts, in magazines and newsprint, and across social media. In 2015, he joined the cast of Shark Tank for two Emmy Award-winning seasons, and has starred as himself on the ABC series Alex, Inc., and on Showtime’s Billions. Chris has appeared on a wide variety of business and news television shows, in the US and abroad, as well as done countless interviews for print and podcasts along the way on topics ranging from business and entrepreneurship to philanthropy and politics.
Chris graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center where he was a member of The Tax Lawyer law review and was honored as a Philip A. Ryan and Ralph J. Gilbert Memorial Scholar. He also graduated cum laude from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University where he majored in Humanities in International Affairs and was an Edmund Evans Memorial Scholar as well as a Weeks Family Foundation Scholar.
In the course of his studies, Chris attended university at the Universidad Católica del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, University College Cork, in Cork, Ireland, and the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, and during his time in law school, worked in San Salvador, El Salvador. Long before any of that, beginning in 7th grade, Chris attended night school at the State University of New York at Buffalo for six years of college mathematics and quickly learned that technology, computers, and innovation would be passions of his for life.
Throughout his career, Chris has carved out time for academic experiences and fellowships including as a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School at Oxford University, an MIT Enterprise Forum Global Trustee, and named to the Atlantic Council Vanguard 25.
Chris lives with Crystal and their three daughters in Jackson, Wyoming. When not working to heal the planet, reform our criminal justice system, and provide access to clean water in the developing world, Chris is an avid alpine and nordic skier, kitesurfer, recovering Ironman triathlete, average-proficiency crossword puzzler, beginner violinist trying to keep up with his kids, intermittent helicopter pilot, and he has bicycled coast-to-coast across the United States of America.
