Jesse Draper

Founder & Investor @halogenvc . Put on this Earth to encourage women in the workplace. Board Member @carbon38 @preemadonna @trustandwill Mom of 3 boys.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Women-owned businesses generate $1.8T / year, yet receive 2% of VC funding. @HalogenVC is changing the trajectory.

For 30 days, we’re highlighting #femalefounders to showcase this $Trillion opportunity.
#InvestInWomen
https://t.co/STTHSR4G7i

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

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]

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]

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

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Today the @LAFD needs you to donate. These terrible fires are still going on and our first responders are working around the clock. Please donate.

https://t.co/pFVjb66KdB

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Couldn’t have said this better. Thanks for putting it in words. 🙏

[Mark Suster @msuster]

I know people are hungry for on-the-ground information of what’s happening in LA. So just to offer you one perspective … 🧵

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

We need more firefighters in Los Angeles! Please come help! It can’t be contained with so few! #PalisadesWildfire

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

@OliviaNBCLA Thank you for sharing. I just signed a 5 year lease here. Wasn’t sure if it was gone. This is confirmation. We were in those burning windows when we first heard about the fire yesterday around 11:30. So glad we got out of there. We’re all safe.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Did you know that Alabama ranks last in the nation for female entrepreneurs? The state of Alabama is our newest investor so….Announcement! Halogen Ventures is investing $10 Million into female founders in Alabama! We are so excited to announce our partnership with @InnovateAlabama , a statewide public-private partnership dedicated to advancing entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation in Alabama. #halogenvc #alabama #startups #VentureCapital #femalefounders

https://t.co/h5tq6MQpkJ

[Stuff.io @stuff_io]

Just a nice PSA from @JesseDraper. 😉

Absolutely great chat.

[Jesse Draper @JesseDraper]

Plan B - Invest in Women. At the end of the year, I like to get my finances in order. I just went through all my stocks a bought more of the companies run by a Fortune500 female CEOs. This is a really easy thing for you to do if you are someone looking for lower risk investments. Women currently only make up 10.4% of the Fortune500 today and that’s 52 companies! And not just any companies! These are companies you’ve heard of and used! Companies like GM, CVS, JetBlue and many others. If you want to help make change, invest in companies with women at the top. Data shows that companies with a woman in the lead have a larger number of female employees, have better company culture, better retention and better sales overall. I love men too, unfortunately right now women’s rights are being taken away and that can change if you get more cash in the hands of women! We need to make sure women are in the leadership team to make any change. Invest in stocks of companies led by women! #investinwomen #investinginwomenisntafuckingcharity #fortune500 #femaleceos #PlanBInvestinwomen

[Halogen Ventures @HalogenVC]

We are still riding off of the great time we had celebrating our first ever @HalogenVC Operators Program (HOP) Event during #latechweek !

Thank you to everybody for attending and our sponsors @awscloud , @SiliconVlyBank , and @manatt!

Counting down the days until the next one!