Chris Sacca, a billionaire investor known for backing tech companies such as Uber, Instagram, and Kickstarter, started investing at a young age. At 13, he made $171 trading futures, an experience that shaped his career.

Sacca, now 49, discussed his early start in investing on “The Tim Ferriss Show.” He recalled trading commodities, specifically live hogs, when he was 13 or 14. His introduction to trading came through a family friend, Bob Haas, who owned a construction equipment rental business. Haas, described by Sacca as his “dad’s best friend,” had a commodities trading account and allowed Sacca to place a trade.

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Haas offered Sacca a deal: he would cover any losses or split any profit equally. Sacca described the agreement as “venture capital.” Given a week to research, he studied investment strategies at the library, learning about “Stochastics, about charts, and technical analysis.” He examined various commodities, including coffee, oil, and cocoa, before identifying a “pattern anomaly” in live hog futures.

Two weeks after making the trade, he earned $171. Comparing this to the $4.25 per hour he earned from manual labour at Haas’ business, Sacca realised the potential of investing. “I was like, ‘I want to be the guy who works upstairs,’” he said. “I can’t tell you how seminal that experience was for me, the rest of my life. There’s only so far you can lever a man-hour.”

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Sacca’s interest in investing grew, and he followed stock quotes regularly, carrying a pager to school. His entrepreneurial mindset had developed early. “From the time I was 6 years old, I was going around the neighbourhood selling walnuts that I’d poke holes in and call air fresheners, or rocks that I had found in a parking lot,” he said. Other ventures included mowing lawns, washing cars, a newspaper route, selling sweets, and running a gambling card game at school. “I paid off a teacher,” he said. “We were always hustling.”

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After earning a law degree from Georgetown University in 2000, Sacca worked as an in-house lawyer at Google. He became an angel investor, supporting startups such as Twitter, now X. In 2010, he founded venture capital firm Lowercase Capital, investing in Uber, Kickstarter, Stripe, and Blue Bottle Coffee.

In 2017, Sacca retired from traditional venture investing, shifting his focus to Lowercarbon Capital, a fund supporting carbon removal startups.