Sacca: Twitter board will hire Jack Dorsey as CEO
LOS ANGELES — Outspoken Twitter shareholder Chris Sacca has no doubt he will win his war with Twitter's board of directors.
“I will get what I want,” he said Wednesday night at a #talkingtechLIVE podcast event here. The event was held at JibJab Studios in the Marina del Rey area of Los Angeles.
The Twitter board has been mulling hiring a new CEO for the micro-blogging service since June, when former CEO Dick Costolo resigned. The board “is stuck, jammed up with members who don’t own a lot of stock, don’t use the product and are in the way,” he said.
They will turn around soon, he believes, and give the post to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who is currently serving as interim CEO, while also running his company Square.
Sacca, who has been pegged by Forbes as worth more than $1 billion for his investments in such tech companies as Uber, Instagram, Kickstarter and others, believes Dorsey can run Twitter and his other company Square at the same time.
"Basically, at all costs, we need to keep the founders involved."
Sacca will be a “guest shark,” on the ABC investment show Shark Tank this season. He says firms always do best with founders at the helm.
“There’s no reason for this,” he says of the board’s actions. “It’s negligent at this point. The board has opened itself up to liability.”
He addressed the diversity issue that’s haunted Silicon Valley, saying it stems from boards who are mostly male and mostly white. When they get more diverse, staffs will as well, he says.
Sacca, who runs his investment firm Lowercase Capital from Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, was one of the earliest investors in Uber, the ride app service that he believes is potentially worth more than Facebook.
“How much money did you spend on Facebook this month?” he asked, rhetorically.
Facebook is currently worth $264 billion, and for Uber,
“I’m not selling it, I’m buying it. It will be a worth a lot more than it is today, and if you have any, I’ll buy it from you.”
He sees Uber becoming a major factor in package and restaurant take-out delivery, beyond just rides.
"As an investor, I’m a believer. You have to believe this thing can be big, you’ll have an opportunity to get rich, and you can impact the outcome, otherwise you may as well be playing the public market. I want to have an impact.”
Follow Paste BN tech columnist and #talkingtech host Jefferson Graham on Twitter, where he’s @jeffersongraham and listen to his daily audio reports on Stitcher and TuneIn.