Chris Sacca's 'What is left?'

Welcome to my blog...

I am Chris Sacca, a venture investor, company advisor, and adventure junkie based in San Francisco. (A longer bio is here.) I use this space to periodically hash out some thoughts and recognize people and events that inspire me. If this site isn't enough Sacca for you, I also regularly update Twitter and FriendFeed. That said, I would love to hear from each of you. If you want to pitch me a company, go to this page for hints as to how that works best. Go here for more on speaking engagements. Always just feel free to email me here for business and only email me here if we are already friends. Thanks for coming by!

Headed to Ethiopia and I Need Your Help!

Just hours ago, my best friend Dick Hillenbrand (@rdhoosier) and I landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and met up with Scott Harrison (@scottharrison) founder of Charity:Water (@charitywater) to dig clean water wells for the rural poor. It is a truly humbling project and we need you to help us.

Across the whole of Africa, 80% of all disease is due to a lack of clean, safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Even more shocking, 42,000 people will die this week because of unsafe water. Almost, 90% of these deaths will be children under 5 years old.

It is a staggering and hardly conceivable number. Almost 40,000 kids per week losing their lives due to lack of clean water!

Charity:Water takes donations from concerned folks like us, who realize how lucky we all truly are to have consistent access to pristine water, and channels them dollar for dollar into the construction of permanent water wells for villages in need.

Just $4,000 can build a well for a village of up to 500 people and serve them with clean water for 20 years.

That is where I want to team up with you. I have already donated wells this year, but I want to do another two. And this time, I want to work with my Twitter friends and see if we can't bring 1000 Ethiopian villagers clean water access for 20 years.

My proposal:

If my Twitter pals raise $4,000 for one well, I will match it dollar for dollar to build a second well. That's right. I will match every dollar you put up until we have two wells together. Plus, since Charity:Water's overhead is funded by a handful of private donors, every single dollar you contribute to the project will go directly toward building a specific well for which you will get GPS coordinates and pictures of its setting.

This week, Dick and I will be traveling the countryside visiting villages and looking for the folks who most desperately need clean water. From among these communities, we will be choosing sites in which Charity:Water and their local partners can build wells, and, in particular, the sites for the two wells you and I will build together.

With your help, we can be sure that two more villages, 1000 more people in total, will have clean water access for the next 20 years.

Next step:

Donate directly to Charity:Water through their site: http://bit.ly/JzAUk

When you give, please send me an email (csacca AT gmail DOT com) and let me know so I can thank you!

In the meantime, keep following my Twitter (www.twitter.com/sacca) and, to the extent possible, I will be providing updates from the field in Ethiopia. If times are tough, and you don't have any change to spare (totally understandable, I was laid off in 2001 and know what it is like), do us a favor and send this post along to someone who might be able to help.

For now, huge thanks for your contributions and your efforts. I can't wait to introduce you firsthand to the people you are saving!

Chris

What would YOU say to the White House tomorrow morning?

I am a big fan of President Obama and the team he has assembled. However, they inherited a country in staggering economic peril. In that light, I applaud the urgency and decisiveness with which they are acting to help us all during such uncertain times.

That said, I have expressed concern that his teams of economic advisors do not include young people. There are certainly brilliant minds on those panels, including my old boss Eric Schmidt. However, I believe deeply that youth would bring a distinct and valuable perspective to any such discussions. In particular, I think there is a generation of entrepreneurs who have been effecting enormous change yet who aren't otherwise involved in politics and whose insights might be lost.

Well, it sounds like someone was listening.

Tomorrow morning, I am joining a group of twenty young business leaders from across the country for a meeting at the White House to discuss the challenges we all face and proposed solutions to the economic crisis.

This is where you come in:  If you were in that meeting, what you would you say? What would you ask? What observations are unique to your station in life? What do you think White House officials might not see or understand unless they had your perspective? What suggestions do you have for the President's team? What should we discuss that might not already be on the agenda?

Please leave your ideas in the comments to this post. Or, send them to me as a @reply message on Twitter (you can find me there at http://twitter.com/sacca).

I hope to hear from you and promise to share everything you write that is sincere, respectful, and well thought out.

Thanks!

Some Thoughts On What The Obama Election Meant To Me.

Over the last few months, I have felt a strong urge, and almost responsibility, to share with my friends why the Obama campaign and presidency meant and mean so much to me. However, each time I've attempted to spill my thoughts onto a page, I've been intimidated and paralyzed by the breadth of possible approaches and the profundity of each of our experiences and motivations. The scope and gravity deterred me, and this blog has remained stale. 

Scattered across various hard drives, journals, and throughout my Gmail account are snippets of reaction and inspiration from each stage in which I participated. While a tech adviser to the campaign, I detailed arms-length paragraphs of intellectual assurance and optimism. Service as a campaign surrogate triggered notes of trepidation that soon evolved to privilege and gratitude. Of course, the inauguration itself was a singularly impactful event to witness. I could, and did, draft pages of real-time reflections at each of these stages. Yet, I think the notes from my time on the road leading up to election day serve as the best illustration of my thoughts...

When my truck and I left San Francisco, my original aim was to spend some a couple of weeks driving around the Rockies interleaving time on my mountain and road bikes with campaigning for Obama in places it mattered such as Nevada and Colorado. My parents had bestowed upon my brother and me a youth hallmarked by consecutive summers in the mountains of the American West. I had sorely missed them and needed a booster inoculation of the awe and humbling context they uniquely inject. In parallel, I saw a mounting number of friends Twittering about their contributions from the trenches and their labor left me feeling like a free-rider.

Fueled by a freshly compiled road trip playlist (a lost art, I would argue), I drove straight through the night to Winnemucca, NV. The next morning, awakening at the Red Lion Casino, I did some impromptu and unofficial canvassing. The folks who spoke to the unmistakable San Franciscan likely self-selected and I enjoyed our polite banter. I will cop immediately to profiling those whom I approached as well.

After a few hours of glad-handing in greasy spoons on Winnemucca's main/only strip, I grabbed my bike and peeled off to some wonderfully isolated and meandering single track on the infamous Bloody Shins Trail. Oh, to be out of the city and unmitigatedly alone on my bike breaking trail and wrestling sage. When I got back to the parking lot, I was spent, but bursting with endorphins and assured I had made the right choice in making this trip.

I dropped back into town to grub and consider my trip's next stop. Food in my belly, and with an eye on making it to Elko that evening, I paused to fill up my tank, still wearing my favorite bike jersey and a peaceful grin that always follows a few hours on the pedals.

I didn't notice their truck when I pulled in, and couldn't describe the driver or passenger. I have no idea whether they were wearing the clothes you would stereotypically associate or playing the music our own prejudice might lead us to expect. All I can say with certainty is that as that white Ford F150 accelerated past the pump island in retreat, I was called a "nigger lover" and an empty beer can hurled at me fell limp to the concrete within a few feet of release, its depleted mass no match for the slight breeze.

As a white man from Middle America, we grow up with a very academic introduction to issues of race. We see the prescribed Oscar-nominated dramas preaching color blindness. We seek out the black kid in our school and feel exonerated when he greets us with a demonstrably soulful handshake. We are convinced that the poignant lyrics from activist hip-hop resonate with us and we grow unwaveringly confident that we understand the struggle. Yet, the privilege of our skin color does not prepare us to ever be the object of hate.

My Arguably Unforgivable Carbon Footprint for 2008.

A year ago this week, I left my job at Google to strike out on my own. I am looking forward to writing more here about how the past twelve months have unfolded. For now, I feel overwhelmingly lucky to have had the chance to connect with my family, so many friends, old and new, and build a new business (the yet-to-be-announced Lowercase Capital) that is leaving me feeling fulfilled, helpful, and so optimistic about the future despite this harrowing economy.

In that light, while I had expected my schedule this year to be a bit slower and reserved compared to the frenzied pace of Google, those who know me are well aware that I can't help but seek out adventures, whether personal or professional. Thus, I thought it would be fun to label a map showing each city in which I spent at least one night this past year.

My total number of miles flown was down sharply from the average of the last four years, and I spent many more miles in my car as I canvassed Nevada for Obama and made a pilgrimage to Moab and Bryce Canyon. There are definitely a few more destinations on this list that were purely for fun compared to years past, but most were still for visiting portfolio companies, giving speeches, or trying to convince decision-makers.

Finished.

Despite a fever on the morning of the race, and disregarding the meniscus issue I developed on my Tour de Los Angeles, I am happy to report that I was somehow able to power through and finish my first official Ironman distance triathlon on August 2nd. (I did an impromptu Ironman myself on June 28th, but there is nothing like the expectation and excitement of the real thing.)

The 2.4 mile swim was a relative breeze considering that when I started this training in November I couldn't make it 10 lengths of the pool without sucking wind. In fact, the 74 degree water served to keep my temperature down and I felt fresh and confident coming in to the first transition.

On the 112 mile bike, my goal was to keep a steady pace early and not go out too fast. I managed the effort solely by my heart rate and just stayed down on my aero bars. The first 60 miles went very smoothly and my pace was surprisingly quick for a guy who was blowing his nose and taking throat lozenges the whole time. However, by mile 75, the 98 degree Sonoma heat had kicked in and I found myself on the side of the road tossing cookies. I puked again at 85, and one more time for good measure at 95. Sheer competitive stupidity allowed me to get back on my rig and maintain a swift pace. However, needless to say, by the time I got to the run transition, I was a mess.

I stood there in the searing hot parking lot of Windsor High School, with Minnie and my parents shouting encouragement from the sidelines. I felt completely detached from my body, a mere close-up observer to an athlete's agony. I came back into the present and put my head down on the bike rack for a minute, pausing to remind myself of why I was doing this and how hard I had trained. Just a marathon to go. Heh.

Thanks to all of you, and your wacky cold cures, I am going to race tomorrow.

I am still floored by the outpouring of remedies and good wishes the Twitter community offered me in the 48 hours leading up to my Ironman tomorrow. I was already depressed by tearing up my knee and not being able to work out at all for the last four weeks. But, when I got sick and developed a nasty fever, I have to say, I was losing hope.

The update is that my fever has broken. I still sound and look like I have an incontinent squirrel living in my sinus cavities. However, with no fever, my doctor has cleared me to hit the starting line tomorrow!

I would be remiss if I didn't recap many of the cures and treatments the Twitter and the FriendFeed folks offered both publicly and privately. I am grateful to all of you, but must say that some of you frankly scared me. Though, I guess my Twitter begged for lunacy in the replies:

Couldn't be happier for Omnisio.

I can't tell you how thrilled I am that the guys from Omnisio, one of my portfolio companies, will be joining the team over at YouTube.

Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar, and Simon Ratner are some of the most legitimate entrepreneurs I have ever met. I marveled at their ability to hack up surprisingly robust technology while creating intuitive and simply easy user experiences. Too often, teams excel in one area but lack any talent in the other, either the software is technically superb, or the UI just flows so naturally. Rarely can a company pull off both. From day one, the Omnisio guys demonstrated true coding chops plus an admirable understanding of, and dedication to, creating a service that users understand, enjoy, and are eager to share with others.

In parallel, as has become the hallmark of YCombinator companies, these guys were the epitome of hungry entrepreneurs. Choosing to keep the company lean and agile, they coded from their apartment breaking only intermittently for the occasional game of kickball and jam sessions like at the MSFT summer party. (Does that make these guys literal rock stars?) In any event, most of their time was spent tirelessly incorporating user feedback into the product and developing features at a fascinating rate.

On that note, as an Omnisio user, and a huge fan of YouTube, I wish the Omnisio guys best of luck as Googlers, and I look forward to the innovation that I am sure will result.