'Shark Tank' star Chris Sacca regrets not investing Snapchat

The SharkTank host has a brilliant track record of early investments, with shares in tech companies like Instagram, Kickstarter, Twitter and Uber.

However, when Mr Sacca was approached by Snap executives in 2012, he ignored the email as he had no interest in Snapchat as a platform.

But with news of Snap CTO Bobby Murphy and CEO Evan Spiegel both reaping $A360 million payouts when the company went public this week, Mr Sacca shared his regrets online.

While Mr Sacca did end up meeting the team behind Snapchat, he passed on investing as he was put off by Snap’s image as a sexting app.

“The Snapchat guys came up to me after a talk once, and I said I’m really flattered but the pics of your junk ... really? So I passed,” he told CNBC last December.

“Later I told my business partner ten years younger than I am and he lost his mind. (He said) ‘do you realise what Snapchat is?’ That probably cost me a billion dollars or two.”

Mr Sacca wasn’t the only one who passed, with Ashton Kutcher passing on Snapchat on two occasions.

“I looked at Snapchat’s product and I hated the product,” he told Recode last year.

“I just thought it was like, a little crickety and a little rickety. It just wasn’t beautiful or elegant.”

Snap jumped 44 per cent to close at $32.41 in its inaugural trading day, after raising $A4.5 billion in the richest US tech company listing since Facebook in 2012.

The California start-up known for its disappearing photo messages priced its offering Wednesday at $A22.50 to give it a market value of $A31 billion.

The strong debut lifted its value to $37 billion, or more than double that of social media rival Twitter, which went public in 2013.