Jesse Draper

Founder & Investor @halogenvc . Backing bold women. 6 unicorns. Mom of 3 boys.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

I did a fun podcast with @Sammicohentalks where I talk about my interview with Elon Musk, venture capital, family and so much more. Let me know what you think!

https://t.co/u5J4I2LrHJ

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Big announcement this week! Our EV charging company ‘It’s Electric!’ just announced that they were selected by the city of New York to be THE charging company! https://t.co/Kj8zhoS0Gx

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

@stevewoz You’re the best dude.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

@chrismichel Thank you for sharing.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

My grandfather Bill Draper was an incredible man. Publicly, he was a Yale and HBS alumnus and a member of the secret society Skull and Bones with George Bush, who he remained close with throughout his life. He would never let you hear the end of why you should go to Yale—he even named one of his dogs after Eli Yale. When asked about the infamous Skull and Bones, he would leave the table because it was a “secret” society, and the rule was not to discuss it.

What he did and helped create in Silicon Valley is immeasurable, but whenever he was given credit, he would pass it off to Leland Stanford. You can read about much of it in his book, The Startup Game. He was ahead of his time and had an incredible female partner, Robin Richards, during much of his venture career, at a time when that certainly wasn’t the norm. He was also the first venture capitalist in India, and to this day, without fail, anyone I meet from India raves about how much he did for the country. Always a gentleman and an eternal optimist.

His accomplishments were extraordinary—from running for Congress against THE Shirley Temple, to backing some of Silicon Valley’s first startup successes, to his work around the world and funding nonprofits through the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation.

But my memories are about the love he had for all of us, and especially for my grandmother, whom he cared for throughout her 40-year battle with Parkinson’s. A real love story. They are now happily reunited. ❤️

Family came first, a lesson he taught us all. He would bring me international black teas from his United Nations travels, and when I was little we’d have tea parties with cream and sugar. He was at every major event in my life, cheering and standing with a hand in the air, from my high school graduation to college graduation.

I can’t believe how lucky I was to have hundreds of Sunday night family dinners with him growing up, where we would debate—and, while I was applying to colleges, endure many tedious Yale mentions. 😂 He was always the kindest. My friends have been sending me wonderful messages with their own stories about growing up with him.

He was fiercely competitive when it came to chess, tennis, and just about any other game. He had a bowl of chocolate ice cream every day and often declared, “Hot fudge sundaes all around!”

I’m heartbroken to lose our patriarch, and so grateful that we had him until 98.

I was lucky enough to say goodbye to him on my grandmother’s birthday, the day before he passed, and to witness his final words with my aunt. Believe it or not, they were: “Ice cream.” 😊

He went out with a bang.

I hope this tribute is a reminder that life and family are precious—and certainly to always appreciate your dessert.

I love you, Pops, and I’ll miss you forever. Thank you for being the greatest role model any of us could have imagined.

Until we meet again. ❤️

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

@davemcclure @WilliamHDraper @TimDraper @BillyDraper @AdamDraper

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

So Keffe killed Tupac! Huge news! Now if we could figure out who killed Kennedy and if Marilyn was set up, that would be great!

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

@TimDraper 💕

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Congrats to @elonmusk and all the @SpaceX investors on a historic IPO. So many questions. Elon, how are you feeling?! And also, do you assume you pay for meals from here on out? Like, I don’t know what etiquette is for a trillionaire. Keep building dude! #spacex #elonmusk

[Ihtesham Ali @ihteshamali]

A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.

Her name is Audrey van der Meer.

She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.

The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.

Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.

Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.

When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.

The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.

When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.

Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.

Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.

The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.

Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.

Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.

Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.

Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.

Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.

A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.

The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.

The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.

The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.

That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.

Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.

Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.

Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.

You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.

The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.

Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.

[NASA @NASA]

Welcome home Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy! 🫶

The Artemis II astronauts have splashed down at 8:07pm ET (0007 UTC April 11), bringing their historic 10-day mission around the Moon to an end.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Putting love and light and positivity out there today.

[Mellie Chow @mellie_chow]

What a privilege to be in the room @UN to celebrate 🌍🗽🍁💃🏻#WomensEntrepreneurshipDay
@womenseday #WEDO2025
#EmpowerHer

Thanks🙏@wendydiamond & @JaimeLeverton for your leadership. Congrats to the delegates for investing in her @smarcelo @JesseDraper GloriaAllfred @HLMorgan 👏

[Birmingham Business Journal @bhambizjrnl]

A California-based venture capitalist's unexpected journey to Alabama reveals a thriving tech ecosystem that's been hiding in plain sight. https://t.co/L4Jyzaz3EG

[Gritty In Pink @grittynpinklife]

All of our speakers are introducing their Roundtable Topics! Can’t wait to hear from you @fredelromano of @livenation
@VCEmmeline
@silviamah
@jessedraper of @halogenvc
Stephanie Granato
@bpagelsminor of @dvrgntventures
and ofc @shiragirl ✨🌟🫶

[All Raise @AllRaise]

.@JesseDraper and @HalogenVC closed a $30M Fund III, backing early-stage startups reimagining care, parenting, and modern households. Her thesis: the future of family is investable and a priority. #WomenInVC #FutureOfWork #FamilyTech

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

I was curious if the @TheMasters had considered supporting the public schools in and around Augusta, GA? Such a great opportunity. Looks like most are ranked 2/10 or 3/10. #education #childcare #Masters2025

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Invest in women. We can solve all the world’s problems! #investinwomen #femalefounders

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

What an incredible way to kick off the week! Women in space! Go team!

[Blue Origin @blueorigin]

We just completed our 11th human spaceflight and the 31st flight of the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez.

To date, New Shepard has flown 58 people to space. Read more: https://t.co/2YHoz6aIEW

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

I hear @nvidia is about to start manufacturing solely on US soil. They should consider doing it in Alabama! Great manufacturing options there. Get in there AL! @InnovateAlabama #manufacturing #alabama