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Home > NewsRelease > Chris Sacca — How to Succeed by Living on Your Own Terms and Getting Into Good Trouble (#790)
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Chris Sacca — How to Succeed by Living on Your Own Terms and Getting Into Good Trouble (#790)
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Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship
For Immediate Release:
Dateline: San Francisco, CA
Thursday, January 23, 2025

 

Chris Sacca is the co-founder of Lowercarbon Capital and manages a portfolio of countless startups in energy, industrial materials, and carbon removal. If it’s unf**king the planet, he’s probably working on it. Previously, Chris founded Lowercase Capital, one of history’s most successful funds ever, primarily known for its very early investments in companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, Docker, Optimizely, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Stripe. But you might just know him as the guy who wore those ridiculous cowboy shirts for a few seasons of Shark Tank. 

To purchase Chris’s ranch, schedule a viewing at FivePondsRanch.com.

Please enjoy!

P.S. This episode features a special, one-of-a-kind introduction that Chris recorded of yours truly. ??

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.

This episode is brought to you by MUD\WTR energy-boosting coffee alternative—without the jitters, Helix Sleep premium mattresses, and AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.

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#790: Chris Sacca — How to Succeed by Living on Your Own Terms and Getting Into Good Trouble

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Want to hear the first time Chris Sacca was on this show? Listen to our conversation here in which we discussed early-stage investing advice, traits of successful founders, two differentiators that shifted the nature of Chris’ business, what Chris looks for when hiring, and much more.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with Chris Sacca:

Website | Instagram | Five Ponds Rach

SHOW NOTES

  • [00:06:47] Chris introduces me.
  • [00:11:07] Some Sacca background.
  • [00:18:32] Raising pre-teen gamblers and tailgating troublemakers.
  • [00:19:54] Conscious changes and rethoughts since our first interview.
  • [00:26:12] The personal and professional influence of Rich and Sarah Barton.
  • [00:30:18] Property management and the Zen of Kevin Rose.
  • [00:35:12] Zillow Gone Wild.
  • [00:36:58] Simplifications.
  • [00:45:03] Remaining optimistic despite being in the business of saying no.
  • [00:51:33] Living in the finite without +1 obligations.
  • [00:56:54] “Wait, what’s hustle culture?”
  • [00:59:48] The (lack of) trouble with kids today.
  • [01:09:53] Raising kids to solve problems and eschew smartphones.
  • [01:14:15] Rawdogging? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
  • [01:16:05] An Andy Goldsworthy aside.
  • [01:16:30] Taking advice from R. Buckminster Fuller GPT.
  • [01:19:13] Assigned reading.
  • [01:20:10] Humans vs. AI.
  • [01:26:20] What happens to people stuck between AI job displacement and a broken social contract?
  • [01:42:38] Counting on the human craving to convene and connect.
  • [01:56:30] What kind of business would a younger Chris start today?
  • [02:00:44] The prescience of The Medium is the Massage.
  • [02:01:39] What does Lowercarbon Capital do?
  • [02:08:44] Projects Chris is most excited about.
  • [02:18:59] Youthful mischief and flim-flammery.
  • [02:24:51] The premise for Chris’ upcoming No Permanent Record.
  • [02:35:25] Cultivating the ability to face (and maybe win over) a tough crowd.
  • [02:39:19] Chris expresses some concerns about this episode.
  • [02:40:24] Recommended reading.
  • [02:45:07] A worthwhile purchase of $100 or less.
  • [02:48:03] Deez Crocs.
  • [02:50:48] Sabotaging potential dates with authenticity.
  • [02:59:11] Parting thoughts.

MORE CHRIS SACCA QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“I feel very lucky to have grown up in a place where I had opportunities to commit small misdemeanors. And I had more than one detention. I definitely appeared before the principals on many occasions. Just some light mischief.”
— Chris Sacca

“The American social contract is that if you show up, you will get yours. And when you don’t give somebody that opportunity or you take it away from them and you take that ownership away from them and you take their house or you take their store and you take their farm, then you get the pitchforks.”
— Chris Sacca

“The number one thing you can be in this business is unpredictable. … I am known as mercurial. I burn bridges. I will not hesitate to fucking fight you. I wear the stupid shirts. I don’t give a shit about much. I’ve been known to just light it on fire. And guess what? People take me seriously as a result.”
— Chris Sacca

“Most climate investing and green investing … had been basically charitable, concessionary … But we started to actually see the math change to where the unit economics of making shit in climate, making shit clean, were starting to pay off.”
— Chris Sacca

“I think the biggest danger of raising kids with privilege is that they turn out to be assholes.”
— Chris Sacca

“The shit you own does own you. Every single object, at some point, has commanded some of your attention.”
— Chris Sacca

“I’m starting to believe more and more that trouble is actually one of those things that informs all the other things that we do.”
— Chris Sacca

“It just turns out that digging up and burning old dinosaur bones is fucking expensive, and using the sun to power the economy is just fucking cheaper. And that’s not a political statement.”
— Chris Sacca

“Clean, abundant power that is almost free is single digit years away, so that’s fucking great. I don’t even bother fighting with the oil and gas people, it doesn’t fucking matter. In fact, I actually want them to work with us more on carbon capture and sequester, putting more carbon back into the ground. Because they’ve got the trucks and they’ve got the pipes and they’ve got the engineering know-how, and they’re great at it. And so we do a lot of work with oil and gas companies going in reverse. I don’t have political battles with those guys.”
— Chris Sacca

“hen you take away agency from somebody, you back them into a corner. So now do that for all the fucking white collar employees, do that for everyone who stayed in and did their fucking homework and went to college and took out all those fucking student loans and who feel like they have played by the rules, they are the pride and joy of their families who actually got their degree, in some cases, a master’s degree, who saw their career path laid out for them, and now they see that their life’s work is obviated by a machine that’s just better than them this fucking fast and costs $20 a month.”
— Chris Sacca

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
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Name: Tim Ferriss
Title: Author, Princeton University Guest Lecturer
Group: Random House/Crown Publishing
Dateline: San Francisco, CA United States
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