Why Chris Sacca Left ‘Shark Tank’
Last season, Chris Sacca was a guest panelist on Shark Tank. With an estimated net worth of $1.11 billion as of October 29, 2017, according to Forbes, Sacca was one of the wealthiest investors on the show. But he decided not to come back, for a simple reason: he was done with working life — at least the working life that involved placing monetary bets on new companies.
In a blog post on April 26, 2017, Sacca announced a complete retirement from venture capital. As a result, he said it was impossible to continue to participate in Shark Tank since he couldn’t do so without investing in companies. So at the ripe old age of 42, Sacca decided he wanted to work on other projects and continue to manage the existing Lowercase Capital portfolio with his wife Crystal and partner Matt Mazzeo.
Speaking of age, it turns out Sacca planned to retire at age 40. It was a pipe dream he had at the age of 20 when he’d scrawled on a piece of paper his eventual goals. As he described in his blog post, this was before he had any idea he would eventually have a hand in such startup dynamos such as Uber and Twitter.
“I went on to describe a job that would involve ‘a lot of time on the phone negotiating’ and overall ‘high risk, high reward.’ I envisioned it as a very lean operation, possibly working out of a bare warehouse, and I would do it half-time from the mountains and half-time from the beach. Last, I predicted that whatever this job was, I would ‘be the best’ at it and then ‘quit at 40 to try my hand at something else entirely.'”
Sacca denied he would be seeking elected office — as Inquisitr reported previously, he was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign — but said he would remain involved in media projects.
Moneywatch reported after Sacca’s retirement announcement that he was an extremely successful venture capitalist, ranked No. 2 by CB Insights for the returns he gets for clients. Sacca started off as a lawyer, then Google employee before eventually trying his hand at startup investing.
Viewers of Sunday night’s double-header of new Shark Tank episodes will see Sacca on set, however. The footage is apparently left over from last season’s tapings, as evidenced by the old decor. Inquisitr reported before Season 9 began that the new year would see a switch-up of seating arrangements as well as a slightly different look than viewers were used to.
Since he announced his departure from investing and Shark Tank, Sacca has made additional news because of harassment allegations over the summer. A New York Times article un June 2017 identified Sacca as the individual who made a colleague uncomfortable at a gathering in 2009. Sacca wrote a post on Medium after the revelation saying he was now aware he contributed to an environment “of women not always feeling welcome in our industry,” although he was not conscious of it at the time the incident occurred.
Shark Tank airs Sunday nights on ABC.
[Featured Image by Alison Buck/Getty Images]
