Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.
— Chris Sacca
It is very hip to be an angel investor now. There used to be a dozen, two dozen guys at these demo days writing checks. Now there are hundreds.
When someone comes in with a product they want in Bed Bath & Beyond, that's way out of my comfort zone.
I'm good at what I do and still improving as I learn from mentors, founders, partners, friends, family, strangers, my own investors, and the experience itself.
Shark Tank's participatory. There's so many people on Twitter for this show, and they all feel like they're in the tank, making calls on this stuff.
I've learned that it's often the less obvious, yet pervasive and questionable, everyday behaviors of men in our industry that collectively make it inhospitable for women.
One of the things that technology has is a direct relationship with its users. We talk about newspapers. But the biggest newspapers in the world right now are Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram.
I think our election proved to us that 'billionaire' is an incredibly magical word in our language in that people just defer to it. Donald Trump is not a billionaire, but he knew it was vital for him to be perceived as one.
2009 was one of the busiest, most insane, stressful periods in my entire career. I was raising a bunch of money, buying a bunch of Twitter. I saw my friend fired as CEO of Twitter. Uber was growing like a weed. As these companies get bigger and bigger, there's more and more friction. Being public was the last thing I wanted to do at the time.
American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.
When I posted the 8,500 words on what Twitter should be, I wanted to make clear this wasn't a vision statement for the future. What was so frustrating about it is that's what it should've been already.
When I was 20 years old, I was living in Ireland, going to school in Cork. There was this girl in my film class that I was kind of flirting with. We had this notebook that we passed back and forth. We would write 10 questions and then pass it back while we were supposedly paying attention.
They are desperate for surrogates to get behind Trump, and they can't find anyone who has actually had genuine success who is willing to stand behind him. That is because he is all smoke and mirrors. We know he doesn't have all the money he claims he has.
'Shark Tank' has been a sincere joy. As our traditional venture-backed companies get bigger, the investing side tends to get more political and complicated. 'Shark Tank' takes me back to my early days working with ambitious founders in their earliest and scrappiest days. The show reminds me of what I deeply love about this business.
A great idea can't succeed without a great operator. But rarely can a great operator squeak by with a bad idea. So, as pithy as it sounds to say 'It's all about the people,' I only invest when I think I have found the right team for the right business.
Ride-sharing is one of the biggest math problems that's ever been approached, that's ever been attempted to be solved.
The old economy with careers and benefits and pensions is gone. There are scary implications to that.
I have definitely refocused Lowercase Capital on later-stage deals and my existing portfolio.
I really do see the sharks evolving their perspective. In the early days of the show, if you brough them an app, they would've turned their noses up. But now they know how indispensable those apps are, even to their own traditional businesses.
The better I get at investing in and helping companies, the result is more founders who are excited to work with me and more of my wonderful limited partners insisting I take piles of their loot to keep it all going.
I have learned a ton about inventory, co-packing, wholesaling, end caps. All these concepts are easy to breeze by in what I do for a living or assume that there is a marketing manager or specialist in one of our companies that handles that.
In social settings, under the guise of joking, being collegial, flirting, or having a good time, I undoubtedly caused some women to question themselves, retreat, feel alone, and worry they can't be their authentic selves.
The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.
Work at a place like Google for awhile: if you do an interview and you say all the right things, no one really cares. But the day you say the wrong sentence, it's attributed to 'Senior Google Executive,' and the stock moves, and everybody hates you.
When you're fundraising for a venture fund, you're supposed to not talk.
Twitter is 'Black Twitter'. That is a brand that 'Black Twitter' has given itself. That's where the hashtags happen... where the excitement is.
The United States... is the greatest nation on Earth, and I believe there are things that make us special - and one is this grand democratic experiment.
I wasn't put on the Earth only to be an investor. That wasn't my only thing in life. The problem is that as you get good at something and you keep getting better at something, more and more people just know you as that, and they have you in that box.
I literally should go to a Twitter therapist, just the 10 years of stress and trauma with this company.
Effective storytelling is the key to getting users to understand and adopt your product as well as imperative to recruiting team members and future investors.
When I first agreed to do 'Shark Tank,' they asked me to wear a suit, and I was just like, 'No. I can't. It'll end my career.'
Uber has an information advantage, a computational advantage. There's massive structural advantages to the player who's smartest about how to deploy cars, where to deploy cars, how to adjust pricing dynamics, how to ensure supply of drivers - the party that understands best the behavior of riders.
Planet colonization is not a short term concern of mine. The physical limitations of space travel render it low on the list for me.
I may be the only shark who hasn't been on QVC, but I have learned a lot from those folks about what it takes to get a product on store shelves.
Uber is a better company with better math, better predictive supply, better brand, lower pickup times, higher quality of service. They'll absolutely win.
One of my rules for investing is, I don't invest in a deal where I don't think I have an unfair advantage and where I don't think I can personally impact the outcome.
Once my ears were open to hearing mentions of 'Shark Tank', I was surprised by how many people in our world, even in our industry, tech and finance, loved the show.
The day after Donald Trump was elected, Chinese business leaders, including the heads of Baidu, stood up and gave a speech saying, 'Come to China and build your company now.' The cognitive dissonance of that was amazing for some of us to think we might be losing our leadership role in building companies.
I've yet to see an example of somebody standing up to Donald Trump and suggesting policy initiatives and him embracing them yet. It's not happening at scale.
I spent a lot of time learning how to define myself internally rather than externally. I learned how to care less about external validation. I think that's given me a renewed confidence in speaking out loud. I kind of don't care what people think about me. I feel a lot more confident in saying what I believe.
A deep appreciation for politics comes from empathy for our fellow human beings and their diverse paths through life.
There is a greed case for diversity. Diverse perspectives bring us into markets we didn't know existed.
There I was - 20 years old, living in Ireland, and I'd never heard the word 'venture capitalist.' But I'd said that I wanted a job that involved a lot of negotiation, a lot of yelling at people on the phone, and for it to be high-risk, high-reward.
I want broadband to grow, more mobile devices available, particularly in underprivileged communities. I want STEM education to go ahead and fund the next generation of engineers.
I've definitely sold some Twitter shares. I don't own as many as I used to, because I'm not an idiot, but I own more than I should because I'm an idiot.
Travis Kalanick was and is the perfect person to lead Uber, a product I knew from day one was going to be big.
I have one of the self-driving Teslas; it drives itself periodically. It's a marvel of science, but it's still frightening. I think we've got a while before regulators and the general public wrap their heads around the path that will lead to the ubiquity of driverless cars. There's no doubt Uber will be a leader in that space.
