Lowercase Capital is an American venture capital firm that provided seed and early stage funding for a number of successful startups including

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Twilio Twilio () is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using i ...

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery ( Uber Eats and Postmates), pack ...

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

, and

Stripe Stripe, striped, or stripes may refer to: Decorations * Stripe (pattern), a line or band that differs in colour or tone from an adjacent surface * Racing stripe, a vehicle decoration * Service stripe, a decoration of the U.S. military Entertainme ...

. It raised over $1 billion in capital and sources claim a return of at least $5 billion to its investors.

History

Lowercase was founded by Chris Sacca in May 2010 with commitments of $8.5 million from limited partners including

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expresse ...

and

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2 ...

. One of the firm's marquee investments was an investment in pre-IPO Twitter, which contributed to more than 1,500% growth in Lowercase's funds, returning approximately “$5 billion to investors.” Fortune has speculated that Lowercase Ventures Fund I, with holdings in

, Docker, and Optimizely is the best-performing fund of all time from a return multiple perspective. Founder Chris Sacca refers to himself as the “proprietor” of Lowercase. In the context of his work at Lowercase, he has been credited by Forbes with allegedly crafting “the best seed portfolio ever. In 2017, the performance of the various funds earned Sacca second place on the Forbes’ Midas List, a yearly ranking of tech investors. He served as a sometimes “shark” on the TV show “Shark Tank” and played himself in ABC's “Alex Inc.” Crystal English Sacca, spouse of Chris and a former advertising creative, is a partner at the firm. She co-led a number of investments, including in Uber, Blue Bottle, and Veggie Grill. Prior to the firm she won a Cannes Lion, Two Gold Cannes Cyberlions and other awards in the advertising industry. In 2013, Matt Mazzeo joined Lowercase Capital as a partner. Mazzeo had worked at

Creative Artists Agency Creative Artists Agency LLC (CAA) is an American talent and sports agency based in Los Angeles, California. It is regarded as an influential company in the talent agency business and manages numerous clients. In March 2016, CAA had 1,800 employ ...

, an entertainment and sports agency. In 2015, Mazzeo led a $25mm fund raised by Lowercase. In April 2017, Chris Sacca announced that the firm would cease to raise further capital from new investors or invest in new companies, but would continue to support its existing portfolio.

Investments

Lowercase provides capital and advisory services to seed-stage startups and growth-stage companies. Among the companies Lowercase has invested in that have gone public or been acquired are

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

, and

. Well-known private companies in the Lowercase portfolio include

, Docker, Optimizely,

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP, hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported secure hypert ...

Medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation *Medium bomber, a class of war plane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium of ...

, and

Lookout A lookout or look-out is a person in charge of the observation of hazards. The term originally comes from a naval background, where lookouts would watch for other ships, land, and various dangers. The term has now passed into wider parlance. ...

. More recent Lowercase investments include

Tala Tala may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Tala (comics), a fictional character in DC comics *''Tala'', a 1938 volume of poetry by Gabriela Mistral *Tala (music), a rhythmic pattern in Indian classical music * "Tala" (song), by Sarah Geronimo ...

, Toymail, Lumi, Joymode, Nurx, Mark43, Makespace, Gimlet Media, Hatch Baby, and Wizeline. Lowercase was active in 2017 in demanding the resignation of former Uber CEO

Travis Kalanick Travis Cordell Kalanick (; born August 6, 1976) is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was t ...

following accusations of misconduct within Uber. Its investments also include 9GAG,

Automattic Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for WordPress.com (a freemium blogging service), as well as its contributions to WordPress (an open source blogging software). The co ...

Chartbeat Chartbeat is a technology company that provides data and analytics to global publishers. The company was started in 2009 and is headquartered in New York City, US. The software as a service (SaaS) company integrates code into the websites of publi ...

Dubsmash Dubsmash was an American video sharing social media service application for iOS and Android. Founded in Germany by Jonas Drüppel, Roland Grenke, and Daniel Taschik, the company relocated from Germany to Brooklyn in 2016. On December 13, 2020 ...

Flirtey Flirtey is a Reno, Nevada-based drone delivery company. The company completed the first Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-approved drone delivery in the United States in 2015, the first FAA-approved urban delivery in March 2016 and the firs ...

, Lumi, Noun Project, Optimizely, Poll Everywhere,

Ranker Ranker is a digital media company located in Los Angeles. The site features polls on entertainment, brands, sports, food and culture. Ranker claims to be one of the largest databases of opinions with more than 1 billion votes gathered on over mil ...

Slack Slack may refer to: Places * Slack, West Yorkshire, a village in Calderdale, England * The Slack, a village in County Durham, England * Slack (river), a river in Pas-de-Calais department, France * Slacks Creek, Queensland, a suburb of Logan City, ...

, Streak,

Urban Airship Airship (formerly Urban Airship) is an American company that provides marketing and branding services. Airship allows companies to generate custom messages to consumers via push notifications, SMS messaging, and similar, and provides customer an ...

, Veggie Grill, and Webshots.

References

External links

* {{official website, lowercasecapital.com Financial services companies established in 2010 Venture capital firms of the United States American companies established in 2010 Companies based in San Francisco 2010 establishments in California