Sacca leaves Google in search of angel deals

Chris Sacca, the head of special initiatives at Google and who led the company’s push to expand the wireless spectrum to more competition, is leaving Google to invest in early stage tech companies.VentureBeat reported that Sacca, who pushed for Google’s deal to offer citywide WiFi in San Francisco, will leave Google at the end of the month to become an angel investor in early stage tech companies. Google wouldn’t identify Sacca’s replacement or who would oversee the company’s wireless policy issues, instead only thanking him for his contributions.

He’ll invest from a small fund for seed investing, though he’s still mulling options on partnerships with other angel investors down the road. He has already invested in such companies such as Twitter and Photobucket and has advised several others.

Sacca told VentureBeat that he considered becoming a venture capitalist, but is more interested in the early stages of entrepreneurship that angel investing has to offer.

His departure comes in an odd bit of timing for the company. In late January, Google is bidding against Verizon Wireless and AT&T in the wireless spectrum auction conducted by the Federal Communications Commission to earn the rights to operate the 700 Mhz frequency band in the United States. —Alastair Goldfisher