Chris and Shivani VS. the World

Venture investor Chris Sacca talks with Shivani Siroya, founder of fintech company Tala, about scaling up your business without locking it down.

- GRAHAM WINFREY

CHRIS SACCA IS TRYING to save the world. The venture investor and founder of Lowercase Capital, known for his early bets on Uber, Twitter, and Instagram, launched Lowercarbon Capital in 2017 to back companies that cut carbon emissions and suck carbon out of the sky. No longer investing billions of dollars in technology and consumer product startups, Sacca, 46, stepped away from Lowercase four years ago to focus on healing the planet, reforming the criminal justice system, and making Silicon Valley more diverse.

“I wanted to apply everything I'd learned and the skill I have as a huge lever, but in a way that mattered,” Sacca says, adding that it's never been cheaper to start companies that can help solve the global climate crisis. “They don't rely on government intervention or government subsidies anymore, and I have the brand where the best companies in the world find me.

Though he no longer sits on the boards of fast-growing tech startups, Sacca still makes time to advise the entrepreneurs Lowercase has backed over the years. One such founder, Shivani Siroya, shares Sacca's passion for solving big problems on a global scale. The 39-year-old former United Nations analyst founded the fintech company Tala in 2011 to lend money to consumers in developing countries who have little or no credit. Today, Tala has loaned billions of dollars to more than four million borrowers in India, Kenya, Mexico, and the Philippines. Starting a business on three very different continents was a strategic decision, according to Siroya.

We picked basically the largest remittance corridors around the world, she says. My goal was essentially not just to prove that we could be global, but to actually be in the flow of money.