Good TV: @Jason Interviews @Sacca

There’s too much written content about startup-related things, even for me. I’ve tried to be more selective *how* articles get filtered to me, as well as what I select to put into Pocket, my reader of choice. But, while there are tons of posts, there are fewer videos. Naturally, I’m biased here because I’ve been doing a weekly show on TechCrunch since January 2012, and I’ve been having so much fun with it. A few months ago, I started noticing that, unbeknownst to me, I had been “Pocketing” more videos and watching them while working, supplanting NPR and music. I didn’t need to hear each minute, but the stories are incredible. I’ll continue to share the ones I’ve watched in full here. Above is @Jason interviewing @Sacca, and this video is amazing — basically, there are so many gems in here’s it’s worth watching in full, maybe even twice. To give you a small taste, Sacca basically was laid off from his job, was broke, so much so that he was in massive debt, almost forced to declare bankruptcy and move back to Buffalo. He definitely used the “fake it ’til you make it” mantra.

It’s really incredible the antics he pulled just to stay alive and network. Other tidbits: He learned more working at a small company we’ve never heard of then he learned at Google; how he won the prestigious Founders’ Award at Google for his shady hacks at building new data centers around the world; his first angel investment was made via a credit card check but ended up turning into a $300m exit, and his second investment was Twitter; how he’s unafraid of big numbers or going bankrupt; why the Series B round is when things get real serious, especially among investors; how VC behavior has improved over the last decade, but that it’s still ugly; how founders get seduced by the “brand” of certain investors; the less told story about how Uber was founded, or rather, randomly came together; how he has ONE BILLION DOLLARS UNDER MANAGEMENT to invest ($35m early-stage fund called Lowercase Spur, plus Lowercase Stampede investing at intersection of tech + content), most of which is buying secondary funds of Twitter; Jason’s show makes $500,000 per year; and much more. Out of the 72 minutes of this video, I’d say 40 minutes offer truly great, original pieces of content.