Who Is Chris Sacca, Shark Tank's Billionaire Guest Judge?
Chris Sacca made his network TV debut in 2015 during the seventh season of "Shark Tank." The guest role made perfect sense as Sacca is a professional angel investor. "It takes something that's normally such an exclusive club of business and venture capital and makes it approachable by everyone," Sacca told Vanity Fair about what he likes about the show's premise. Plus, he said he loves the passionate fan base. "When I get stopped on the street, it's the widest variety of people who stop me ... to say hi and to specifically weigh in on deals I did or didn't do," the investor explained.
"Shark Tank" was also a good idea for Sacca because, just like fellow shark Mark Cuban, both men are billionaires. Forbes estimated in 2021 that Sacca was worth around $1.2 billion thanks to smart early investments in some of the biggest companies in the world, like Uber. Even for every one of his successes, he also has regrets, like missing a chance to invest in Snapchat. As one of the earliest investors and users of Twitter, Sacca clearly had a few opinions on Elon Musk taking over the company and felt that the new owner needed to improve what Sacca called the sad new state of the social media site.
Beyond giving chances to wild and potentially lucrative business ideas on reality TV, this is everything you need to know about Chris Sacca, the "Shark Tank" guest judge.
The business savvy of Chris Sacca
Prior to his life as an angel investor, Chris Sacca was an attorney in Silicon Valley, where he dealt with venture capital. He later joined Google and became the lead of special initiatives, and started a new business development group within the company. Showing his wide range of skills, Sacca was also a volunteer and advisor for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Yet, it was Sacca's investment skills that ballooned his net worth and made him one of the hottest names for hopeful companies looking for early investments. "What I'm looking for are founders — individual entrepreneurs — from whom I can sense the inevitability of their success. They just know in their bones that this thing is going to work out," Sacca told USA Today about the traits he saw in the founders of companies he invested in, like Kickstarter.
Even with his clearly gifted intuition in investing, in addition to the lucrative rewards, Sacca still tries to stay humble among all his triumphs. "What's success anyway? Is success about making the most money? No, money — for the most part — turns people into jerks," he explained during his 2011 commencement speech at the University of Minnesota, which NPR ranked as one of the best ever. He also doesn't take himself seriously when dressing, usually sporting a Western shirt, even on "Shark Tank." According to Sacca, he first bought a cowboy shirt at the Reno, Nevada, airport, and it became part of his uniform ever since.
The personal side of Chris Sacca
Chris Sacca is married to Crystal English Sacca. The two met freshman year, and while Chris asked her out, she declined, and the two stayed friends for 14 years before starting a romantic relationship. The couple definitely mixes business with pleasure as she is a partner at his venture capital firm, Lowercase Capital, and is partly responsible for some of her husband's biggest business victories. For example, Chris invested in Blue Bottle Coffee, a popular cafe chain in San Francisco, even though he doesn't drink coffee. According to the billionaire, his wife encouraged him to invest in the coffee company. "My wife is kind of the silent partner in our business. She was a really successful advertising creative, understands how people think, and knows when things will be big," Chris told Forbes. "In fact, there are a couple of times I wish I listened to her," he admitted about passing on her suggestion to invest in Pinterest.
In their personal life, Chris and Crystal have three daughters together. To make sure everyone in the family had names that start with the letter C, the couple named their children CC Eleven, Circa Luna, and Center Sky. The family has several homes around the world, including Jackson, Wyoming, Copenhagen in Denmark, and Truckee, California. Chris is also the sporty type, both in surf and snow. Plus, he used to compete in triathlons, and he once cycled across the United States.