David Sacks is an entrepreneur and investor in internet technology firms. He is the general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Sacks was also the founding COO and product leader of PayPal, Founder and CEO of Yammer. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, Airbnb and Houzz.
Early life and education
David Oliver Sacks was born on 25th of May 1972, in Cape Town, South Africa. David was only 5 when they relocated to Tennessee.
David attended Memphis University School in Memphis, Tennessee. David earned his B.A. in Economics from Stanford University in 1994, and in 1998, he got a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. David didn’t know he wanted to become an entrepreneur, but he knew he did not want to be an endocrinologist like his father. However, David took his inspiration from his grandfather, who started a candy factory in the 1920s.
On July 7, 2007, David married Jacqueline Tortorice.
PayPal
In 1999, David ran as a Management Consultant at McKinsey & Company, and less than a year, he left his job to join up e-commerce service PayPal. David was PayPal’s Chief Operating Officer and product leader, where he directed 700 employees, and developed many of their key teams. David was responsible for product management and design, marketing and sales, international, customer service, business developments, fraud operations, and human resources function at PayPal.
During his term, David was able to grow payment from $0 to $500 million monthly and $0 to $240 million yearly in revenue. They also beat eBay on its own platform and won the auction payments space, making PayPal as #1 financial website in the world. The company grew into multiple currencies, introduced business accounts in over 80 countries.
PayPal went public in February 2002. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, PayPal was one of the first IPOs (in November 2001, ABCO went public). The stock mounted more than 54% that first day and closed at $20.09. For $1.5 billion, eBay acquired PayPal in October 2002. David is also a member of the PayPal Mafia.
Thank You for Smoking
After PayPal’s acquisition, David financed and produced the hit movie Thank You for Smoking through his independent production company, Room 9 Entertainment.
Thank You for Smoking is a satirical look at today’s culture of spin, based on Christopher Buckley’s acclaimed in 1994 novel and adapted for the screen by director Jason Reitman. The all-star cast includes Aaron Eckhart, William H. Macy, Rob Lowe, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, Maria Bellow, Robert Duvall, and Adam Brody. In 2007, the hit movie received 2 Golden Globes for winning the Best Actor and Best Picture in the Comedy/Musical category. The Thank You for Smoking also received several awards such as Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards, Best First Feature at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, Audience Awards at both the Munich and Norwegian Film Festival, Best Adapted Screenplay at the Washington DC Film Critics Association Awards and the San Diego Film Critics Association Awards, and the New York Film Critics Online as Top Films of the Year.
Geni
In 2006, David founded Geni.com, a genealogy website that allows family members to collaboratively assemble an online family tree. Geni is forming a family tree of the whole world, allowing millions of family members to collaborate, connect, and preserve their lives. With more than 100 million people associated in one family tree, Geni became the leader in collaborative genealogy.
At Geni, David sought more range into what was going on across the organization, so the team generated a productivity tool to support employees share information. David and his co-founder, Adam Pisoni spun this internal communications tool into an independent company in 2008, called Yammer. In 2012, MyHeritage acquired Geni.
Yammer
In 2008, Yammer opened the first Enterprise Social Network, a protected solution for internal corporate communication and collaboration, which won them the grand prize at the TechCrunch50 conference. According to Social Capital, Yammer’s viral tactic made it among the fastest-growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies in history, surpassing eight million enterprise users in just four years. Yammer collected approximately US$142 million in funding from venture capital firms such as Charles River Ventures, Emergence Capital Partners, Founders Fund, and Goldcrest Investments.
Microsoft obtained Yammer for $1.2 billion as an essential part of its cloud/social strategy in July 2012. Today, employees at over 100,000 businesses worldwide use Yammer, including a significant amount of the Global 2000 and 85% of the Fortune 500.
Zenefits
David became a stockholder in Zenefits in December 2014, creating a “major investment,” according to VentureBeat. Zenefits’ Board requested him to step in as interim CEO in January 2016, amidst a regulatory crisis concerning the company’s licensing agreement. Over the next year, David settled a resolution with insurance regulators across the U.S., getting praise for righting the ship. David also refurbished Zenefits’ product line and named it Z2, presenting a SaaS business model. Just after, PC Magazine would note Zenefits had become the best HR software on the market. After searching for a new CEO, David handed the reigns to Jay Fulcher, a former Ooyala CEO.
Harbor
David nurtured a new startup in 2017, called Harbor to facilitate the compliant issuance of private securities on the blockchain. As founding chairman, David had gotten together a team of former executives who had worked with him at Yammer and Zenefits to manage the new company. Harbor is serving to power the next big wave in capital markets – tokenized securities – by applying regulatory compliance on the blockchain. Harbor’s Regulated Token Standard (“R-Token”) grants investors and issuers to abide by regulations and existing rules when trading and issuing security tokens.
Craft Ventures
In late 2017, David co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage VC fund devoted to the skills of building great companies. David O. Sacks and Bill Lee co-founded Craft Ventures that headquartered in San Francisco. It raised an initial fund of $350 million and has financed in companies including SpaceX, Multicoin Capital, Lightning Labs, Harbor, CloudKitchens, Cloud9, Bitgo, and Bird.
Craft’s first investment was for series A round for Bird, it is a scooter sharing company. The firm invested in a series B round of funding. Craft’s invested in BitGo and other investors included Galaxy Digital Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Valor Equity Partners. Craft Ventures, in union with Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and Chamath Palihapitiya invested $28 million into eSports startup Cloud. Craft has invested in Harbor, a blockchain company which offers services for firms to tokenize their assets. In October 2018, Craft invested a business to business logistics platform called Wayv, which works in the cannabis industry. Craft have also financed SpaceX, Lumina, Reddit, and talent-outsourcing startup Terminal.
Investments
For twenty years, David has been investing in technology companies. As an angel investor, David’s investments include Wish, Uber, ThirdLove, SurveyMonkey, SpaceX, Slack, Scribd, ResearchGate, Postmates, PayPal, Palantir Technologies, Opendoor, Mixpanel, Intercom, Houzz, Facebook, Eventbrite, Clutter, AirBnB, Affirm, and Addepar.