David Sacks

Who they are

David Sacks is Co-Founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures — founding COO of PayPal, founder of Yammer (sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion), and co-founder of Glue, an AI workspace chat tool.

Person

David Sacks earned a BA in Economics from Stanford in 1994 and a JD from University of Chicago Law School in 1998, then briefly did management consulting at McKinsey before joining Confinity — the company that became PayPal — as Founding COO, where he shaped the product through its eBay acquisition. After PayPal he founded Geni.com in 2006, a social-media-flavored genealogy platform, then spun Yammer out of Geni's internal tools in 2008 and sold it to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion. He stepped in as Interim CEO at Zenefits during its compliance crisis before co-founding Craft Ventures with Bill Lee in late 2017. Alongside the VC track he co-founded Glue in 2021 with Evan Owen — an AI workspace chat tool that launched publicly in May 2024 to reduce Slack channel fatigue — and earlier backed Callin, a social podcasting platform that raised $12 million. He served as White House AI and Crypto Czar in the Trump administration. He co-hosts the All-In podcast with Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg, covering tech, markets, and policy, and writes on SaaS metrics, unit economics, and startup scaling at davidsacks.medium.com. The through-line is operator-turned-investor: every move traces back to someone who has shipped product at scale and now backs others who do the same.

Company

Craft Ventures' most recent lead was a $30 million growth round for ComfyUI on April 24, 2026, at a $500 million post-money valuation — a bet on AI infrastructure orchestration tooling. In the same month the firm led a funding round for Hyfix, a U.S. startup building a single autonomous-systems chip for drones, framing it as a domestic supply-chain answer to DJI's dominance. Earlier in 2025 the firm led a $120 million Series B for Oasis Security (agentic access management), a $33 million Series A for Daylight Security (AI-driven managed detection and response), and a $42 million Series A for Starbridge in govtech — a cluster of bets that signals a deliberate tilt toward AI security and national-security-adjacent technology. The fund itself is well-capitalised: Craft Ventures IV and Growth II closed in November 2023 at a combined $1.32 billion, bringing total assets under management to over $3.5 billion across more than 350 portfolio companies.

Market

Craft Ventures competes directly with the Bay Area's largest multi-stage firms — Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Lightspeed, Greylock, Benchmark, and Founders Fund — for early-stage B2B technology deals, particularly in SaaS, AI, and cybersecurity. Its differentiation is an operator-founder identity: the PayPal Mafia lineage and Sacks's own founder track record are the pitch to founders who want pattern-matched advice, not just capital. Geopolitical dynamics — US-China trade tensions, tariff pressures, and government focus on domestic supply chains — are actively shaping where the firm places bets, as seen in drone chips, space systems, and govtech.

Network

Sacks's closest professional circle includes his Craft Ventures co-founder Bill Lee and the All-In podcast co-hosts — Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg — a group that collectively shapes a large portion of the public discourse on tech investing and policy. His long-standing relationship with Peter Thiel dates to 1995, when the two co-authored 'The Diversity Myth.' Evan Owen co-founded Glue with him, and Jeff Fluhr (founder of StubHub) joined Craft as a general partner in 2018.

Bill Lee· Co-founder, Craft Ventures
Chamath Palihapitiya· Co-host, All-In Podcast
Jason Calacanis· Co-host, All-In Podcast
David Friedberg· Co-host, All-In Podcast
Peter Thiel· Long-time associate; co-author (1995)
Evan Owen· Co-founder, Glue
Jeff Fluhr· General Partner, Craft Ventures; founder of StubHub

How they likely show up

Founder-then-investor arc (PayPal COO → Yammer founder → Craft GP) → he evaluates companies through an operator lens first, capital second — expect product and unit-economics questions before anything else.
Stepped in as Interim CEO at Zenefits during a compliance crisis → comfortable taking control in chaotic situations; likely has low tolerance for founders who avoid hard conversations.
Active writer at davidsacks.medium.com on SaaS metrics, sales management, and unit economics → he has strong, pre-formed views on how B2B companies should be run; he's not workshopping ideas, he's sharing convictions.
Co-hosts a high-volume public podcast (All-In) on tech, markets, and policy → comfortable in adversarial debate formats; he sharpens positions through disagreement, not consensus.
Hybrid role pattern (VC + active co-founder at Glue, launched publicly May 2024) → doesn't sit still between funds; he's still building, which means he respects founders who are in the work, not just the pitch.
Recent investment cluster in AI security, drone chips, and govtech → his thesis has a national-security and domestic-supply-chain dimension; geopolitics is part of his investment framework, not just political commentary.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific Medium post — he's written precisely on SaaS sales or unit economics, and citing the argument (not just 'I read your blog') signals you did the work.
→ Ask about Glue specifically — he built it while running a VC firm, which is an unusual bet; he'll have a clear thesis on why AI workspace chat needed a new entrant and why now.
→ Come in with a view on the ComfyUI or Hyfix investments — he's making deliberate bets on AI infrastructure and domestic supply chains; having an opinion on the thesis (agreeing or disagreeing) will get a better conversation than a neutral question.
→ Don't treat the All-In podcast as small talk — it's a central part of how he thinks out loud; quoting a specific episode or argument from it shows you're tracking his actual positions.
→ Be direct and specific. He debates publicly for sport; vague questions will get vague answers.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Glue's May 2024 public launch — he co-founded an AI workspace chat tool while running a $3.5 billion fund, which is a pointed bet that the Slack-replacement moment is now; asking what convinced him to build again rather than just invest will get a real answer.
Reference the Hyfix investment (April 2026) — Craft led a round for a U.S. startup building a single autonomous-systems chip for drones as a domestic alternative to DJI; it's a specific, consequential bet at the intersection of geopolitics and deep tech that reveals how he's thinking about the next investment cycle.
Cite his 1995 book 'The Diversity Myth', co-authored with Peter Thiel — it's the earliest public record of his intellectual commitments and predates PayPal by four years; asking how his views have evolved (or haven't) opens a substantive conversation without being either fawning or confrontational.

Discovery questions

You led ComfyUI's $30 million growth round at a $500 million valuation in April 2026 — what does owning the AI infrastructure orchestration layer mean to you strategically, and how does it connect to the agentic security bets at Oasis and Daylight?
You built Glue while actively managing Craft — what did going back to founding-mode teach you about what founders actually need from their investors that you couldn't see from the LP side?
Craft has made consecutive investments in drone chips (Hyfix), space systems (Xona), and govtech (Starbridge) — how much of that is opportunistic and how much is a deliberate thesis about where government procurement money flows next?

Avoid

Don't open with generic AI-hype framing — he writes precisely about unit economics and has strong pre-formed views on SaaS fundamentals; surface-level enthusiasm about 'the AI moment' will signal you haven't read his work.

Make it yours