David rose to prominence in 1999 after joining the digital payment platform, PayPal, then known as Confinity. During this time, Sacks pivoted the company from beaming money on Palm Pilots to emailing money. At the same time, he grew the company’s revenue from zero to over $240 million per year. In 2002, eBay purchased PayPal for over $1.5 billion.

Sacks went on to form several successful technology companies such as Geni.com, a genealogy resource-based website and Yammer, a social networking service used mainly for private communication within organizations. Yammer was of the first SaaS startups to apply consumer growth tactics to enterprise software. 

Location

David O. Sacks was born in Cape Town, South Africa. His parents immigrated to the United States when he was five and settled in Tennessee. Sacks graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in economics. He also achieved a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1998

David married Jacqueline Tortorice on July 7, 2007. The couple has two daughters and one son. Although Sacks has not commented on his net worth, it is estimated to be around $150 million.

Incredible Investments

Through Craft Ventures, Sacks invested in more than 20 unicorns, including Airbnb, Houzz, Uber, Wish, Eventbrite, Affirm, Twitter, ClickUp, SpaceX, Facebook, Slack, Lyft, OpenDoor, Bird, Palantir and Scribd. 

David O. Sacks and those affiliated with the $1.5 billion sales of PayPal achieved great wealth. This defining moment gave Sacks the investment capital needed to create several internet technology firms and eventually sell these firms for huge profits. In 2012, Microsoft purchased Yammer for $1.2 billion and sold Geni to MyHeritage after they raised $25 million to acquire the firm, all in the same year. 

Besides his technology investments, Sacks also has vested interests in the entertainment industry. He produced and financed the movie, Thank You for Smoking, through his independent production company Room 9 Entertainment. 

Thank You for Smoking gained both commercial and critical success. Based on the Christopher Buckley book, the movie was nominated for two Golden Globes. 

He has also won several business awards  including:

• 40 Under 40, San Francisco Business Times
• Bay Area’s Most Admired, San Francisco Business Times
• Game Changer Award, Workforce Management

David Sacks in the News

The Globe-Newswire January 25, 2022 article reported that, alongside Accell, Craft Ventures led funding to ScratchPad Inc by securing $33 million. With Sacks’ funding efforts, Scratch Pad Inc., a leader of the revenue team workspace, increased funding to $49 million.