David Sacks | |
|---|---|
 Sacks in 2011 | |
| Born | David Oliver Sacks May 25, 1972 Cape Town, South Africa |
| Education | |
| Occupation | Tech entrepreneur / investor |
| Employer | Craft Ventures |
| Known for | Former CEO of Zenefits, former COO of PayPal and CEO of Yammer |
| Spouse |
Jacqueline Tortorice
(m. 2007) |
| Children | 3 |
David Oliver Sacks (born May 25, 1972)[1] is an entrepreneur, author and investor in internet technology firms. He serves as the general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Additionally , he is also a cohost of the All In podcast, alongside Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis & David Friedberg.[2] Previously, Sacks was the COO and product leader of PayPal[1][3] and founder and CEO of Yammer.[4][5] In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for 10 months.[6] In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures,[7] an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb.[8][9][10]
Sacks was born in Cape Town, South Africa, to a Lithuanian-Jewish family [11] and immigrated to Tennessee, United States, with his family when he was five.[12] Though Sacks did not know he wanted to be an entrepreneur, he did not want to work a profession like his father, who was an endocrinologist. He took inspiration from his grandfather, who started a candy factory in the 1920s.[13]
Sacks attended Memphis University School in Memphis, Tennessee. He earned his B.A. in economics from Stanford University in 1994[14] and received a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1998.[15][16][17]
In 1999, Sacks left his job as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company to join e-commerce service PayPal, which had been co-founded the year before by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel.[1] As PayPal's COO and product leader, he built many of the company's key teams, and was responsible for product management and design, sales and marketing, business development, international, customer service, fraud operations, and human resources functions.[18]
PayPal had their initial public offering in February 2002. It was one of the first IPOs after the September 11 attacks. The stock rose more than 54% on the first day.[19] In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion.[20]
Sacks is a member of the so-called "PayPal Mafia", a group of founders and early employees of PayPal who went on to found a series of other successful technology companies. They are often credited with inspiring Web 2.0 and the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the dot com bust of 2001.[21][22]
Following PayPal's acquisition, Sacks produced and financed the movie Thank You for Smoking through his independent production company, Room 9 Entertainment.[1] Sacks developed and produced the 2023 film Dalíland about artist Salvador Dalí.[23]
In 2006, Sacks founded Geni.com, a genealogy website. In 2008, Sacks and co-founder Adam Pisoni spun this internal communications tool into a standalone company called Yammer.[24] Geni was acquired by MyHeritage in 2012.[25]
In 2008, Yammer launched the first Enterprise Social Network, a secure solution for internal corporate communication and collaboration,[26] winning the grand prize at TechCrunch50 conference.[27] According to Social Capital,[28] Yammer's viral approach made it among the fastest-growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies in history, exceeding eight million enterprise users in just four years. Yammer received approximately US$142 million in funding from venture capital firms such as Charles River Ventures, Founders Fund, Emergence Capital Partners, and Goldcrest Investments.[29]
In July 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion as a core part of its cloud/social strategy.[30]
In December 2014, Sacks made a "major investment" in Zenefits.[31] In January 2016, Zenefits' board asked him to step in as interim CEO amidst a "regulatory crisis" regarding the company's licensing compliance.[32] Over the next year, Sacks negotiated a resolution with insurance regulators across the U.S. – receiving praise for "righting the ship".[33] Sacks also revamped[34] Zenefits' product line with an initiative he named "Z2",[35][36] introducing a SaaS business model. Shortly after, PC Magazine would note Zenefits had become "the best HR software on the market" while Buzzfeed reported the company was losing over $200 million per year.[37][38] After just 10 months in the role, Sacks was succeeded by former Ooyala CEO, Jay Fulcher.[39]
Sacks has been investing in technology companies for twenty years.[40] As an angel investor, his investments include Addepar, Affirm, Airbnb, Bird, Clutter, Eventbrite, Facebook, Gusto, Houzz, Intercom, Mixpanel, Opendoor, Palantir Technologies, PayPal, Postmates, ResearchGate, Rumble, Scribd, Slack, SpaceX, SurveyMonkey, ThirdLove, Uber and Wish.[41]
In late 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures and raised an initial fund of $350 million.[42] Craft raised $1.1B in 2021, which brought total assets under management to $2B, according to a Medium post published by the company.[43] Unicorns in Craft Ventures Fund I and Fund II include Bird,[44] BitGo,[citation needed] ClickUp,[45][46] Pipe,[47] Reddit,[48] SourceGraph,[49] and SpaceX.[50][42]
According to the New Republic, he is identified as a libertarian.
Sacks first met future business partner Peter Thiel working as a writer for the campus newspaper founded by Thiel, The Stanford Review. While writing for The Review, Sacks was notable for his impassioned defense of a senior who pled no contest on charges of statutory rape in an addition of the paper titled "The Rape Issue". In the article, Sacks "included a graphic description of the encounter, noting that the 17-year-old victim ‘still had the physical coordination to perform oral sex’".[51]
After graduating from Stanford, Sacks would co-author with Peter Thiel the 1995 book The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford, published by the Independent Institute.[52] The book is critical of political correctness in higher education and argues that more intellectual diversity is needed on college campuses.[52]
The following year, writing for Stanford Magazine, he argued against affirmative action in the United States, saying that it had hurt the "disadvantaged", not helped them, and had led to increased segregation at Stanford University in the name of "diversity".[53]
In 2016, Sacks apologized for parts of the book including where he called date rape "belated regret" and questioned, "Why is all blame placed on the man?"[54]
According to the Federal Election Commission, Sacks donated $50,000 to Republican Party candidate Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012. In 2016, he donated nearly $70,000 to Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.[54]
In the 2022 San Francisco Board of Education recall elections of members Collins, Moliga, and Lopez, Sacks gave one of the largest contributions to support the recall.[55][56] He is also a significant booster of Republican candidates, sponsoring a spring 2022 fundraiser for GOP senate hopefuls including J. D. Vance and Blake Masters alongside his former colleague and partner Keith Rabois.[57] In total, Sacks directly gave over $1,000,000 to Senate candidates in 2022.[58]
On May 24, 2023, Sacks was the moderator when Ron DeSantis announced his 2024 presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces. He praised DeSantis and donated $50,000 to his campaign.[59] Later in June 2023, Sacks hosted a $10,000/plate fundraiser for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.[60]
In 2023, David Sacks has been increasingly commenting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US policy towards it, and especially US military funding for Ukraine.[61] Some of his claims include the "US dispatching an Army General to assume de-facto command of the Ukrainian Army",[62] the debunked Russian propaganda narrative about "Ukrainian Neo-Nazis",[63] that "Russia was seeking a peace deal in the early months of its invasion",[64] and that "inviting Ukraine into NATO can launch a forever war in Europe".[65] In a Tweet in January 2024, Sacks implied that "Ukraine is Russia's backyard"[66] and that Volodymyr Zelensky's peace plan is a "set of maximalist war aims"[1].
On July 7, 2007, Sacks married Jacqueline Tortorice.[70] The couple have two daughters and one son.[71]