Tim. Draper

Backing the bold ideas that shape the future. Founder of @DFJvc, @drapervc, @Draper_U, @meetthedrapers.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

While @websummit was again a well-oiled machine for technology and networking, Vancouver, BC, Canada has become a city of drug addicts and vagrants as far as the eye can see. The once booming and gorgeous metropolis has taken socialist policies to such an extreme that people now don't own the property they thought they did (ancestors of the native tribes do), where the average worker earns $60k Canadian (net $35k), while the homeless get $80k of value tax free with free needles, drugs (yes, drugs) and cell phones. Note that the public employees get ($100k) far more than the taxpayer who they work for. Human incentives are everything. They are backwards in BC.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

The next wave of the space economy won’t be built the way the last one was.

Strong perspective from @AmirBlachman on what’s missing and what comes next.

https://t.co/X54bgC3HgX

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Congrats to the @ConsensusNLP team on their Series B! 2.5 million researchers are using their AI to accelerate their work.

The researchers who cure the next disease, solve the next energy crisis, make the next breakthrough are working right now and Consensus puts better tools in their hands today!

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

I've always been a spreadsheet geek.

I can do most anything with a spreadsheet, but databases eluded me.

Then I met George Fraser.

He told me he could look at data as a conglomeration of spreadsheets and that those spreadsheets could be alive with streaming data.

I was intrigued.

I was Fivetran's largest angel investor.

Now George has built Fivetran into the standard for companies to access and integrate reliable, dynamic, secure data.

The business intelligence Fivetran has provided to thousands of customers is incalculable.

George made databases make sense to a spreadsheet geek.

The company is now the #1 cloud-based data movement platform.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Having met all of the viable candidates, and after a lot of soul searching, I came to the conclusion that @SteveHiltonx is the best option to grow California as Governor. I am endorsing Steve with great enthusiasm.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

WOW... just WOW! As you all know, I love BIG ideas. When @BaijuBhatt first came to me about Robinhood, I thought it was extraordinary that he wanted to take on Wall Street. Now he wants to conquer AI, Space, and Energy...! Well, if anyone is going to do this, I am betting on THIS guy! I am proud to be in the first round of investments in both of your startups. Go get'em @CowboySpaceCorp

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Watch this awesome video with a creative mind.

It will give you images of the future that innovative entrepreneurs from the @DraperVC portfolio are building.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

We just wrapped Draper Summit 2026 at Half Moon Bay. Every year we host this reunion of people who are changing the world.

We heard from some of the top leaders today including:

Baiju Bhatt, Founder of Robinhood → Aetherflux (this man does not slow down)

Rosie Rios, former Treasurer of the United States.

Rob Kaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Sal Khan, who is revolutionizing how every human on Earth learns.

The conversations were so futuristic, you would have to hear it from our entrepreneurs to believe it.

HexemBio is rejuvenating all your blood cells.

There were stealth companies regenerating limbs via bioelectricity, replacing brain cells, and rethinking human reproduction entirely via artificial wombs.

Muse Bio launched the world's first topical rejuvenative serum made from menstrual blood stem cells - promoting scarless healing and glowing skin.

Autolane is building the orchestration layer the autonomous world needs to function.

Feltsense is building founder agents that source ideas, build product, and go to market without a human in the loop (they replicated the entire YC batch a few weeks ago).

Venus Aerospace is developing the most efficient rocket engine ever built.

Gemma Robotics sent a robot to autonomously apply professional make up - airbrushed foundation, contour, etc. The results were fantastic.

And we live taped Meet the Drapers Silicon Valley! You'll have to tune in to see the winner…

Another summit in the books, for the books.

The greatest takeaway about what made Draper summit successful:

We all were able to spend time in a beautiful location, learning about frontier tech, getting to know each other deeply, and creating real, meaningful friendships while simply having a lot of fun. At Draper, we know that VC runs on relationships that compound over decades. We are here to build trust with you as you build generational companies.

Thank you to all our LPs, founders, ecosystem members, co-investors, and of course the relentless Draper team for coming and making this all possible.

Let me know in the comments if you should come next year. Hope to see you there.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Mike Santullo and Larry Drebes are two of my favorite entrepreneurs ever.

Every time I came to a board meeting, Mike and Larry would have a new software product or feature to demo. The energy in their company was palpable.

They cold-called me on a Monday, we met that week, and had a term sheet the following Thursday.

I felt like I needed to move as fast as they did.

Four11 started as a lookup service for business websites. Then they met the Hotmail founders at a DFJ Schmoozefest and learned about web-based email and viral marketing.

So they decided to do it themselves. They launched RocketMail. Sold it to Yahoo. The product is now called Yahoo Mail.

It has 200+ million users today.

The lesson is obvious.

Speed matters. Energy matters.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Bill Gross was a genius out of Caltech.

When we met Bill, he explained how he was going to create the search tool for commerce. We were so impressed with his idea that we agreed to fund him.

The idea was a search engine called GoTo with bidded listings.

Bill changed the face of internet advertising forever.

The genius was that advertisers would pay for search terms. GoTo would charge different prices for different terms based on demand.

This was the beginning of paid search. Before Bill, no search engine had any profitable business model.

This innovation became instrumental to the success of Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, and all the other paid search engines. GoTo later rebranded as Overture and acquired other search engines.

In 2003, Yahoo bought Overture for $1.6 billion.

The worldwide paid search industry is now estimated to be over $300 billion.

Paid search is common sense now.

Back then, it was a stroke of genius from Bill.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

We are proud to double down on our seed investment in Scout by leading their $100M series A. Colby and Collin are world-class entrepreneurs and technologists.

Between seed and Series A, Scout’s vision language and action (VLA) model was deployed in the field by their government and commercial customers.

Freedom is not free. Edge intelligence is the future, and its applications range from industrial security, deterrent for global conflicts, and cyber security.

With Scout, the world is a safer and better place for everyone.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

This is well written, clear, and will catch you up on all things Bitcoin. Highly recommended reading for anyone who is Bitcoincurious, or even for those who are Maxxies out there. @TonyLuh

https://t.co/v894aDF2sJ

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

At Bitcoin Vegas, I gave out ties to spread the Bitcoin message.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Also saw the incomparable @TonyRobbins. He fired us all up to do great things with our lives.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

@TonyRobbins Waterfall pitch competition in Honolulu. This was the winner.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Working with UT Dallas on developing their startup efforts. ⁦@draper_u⁩ https://t.co/d8aYE3XF2P

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Back in 1999, I met Mark Goldston through Jennifer Fonstad.

We became friends instantly.

Mark saw something most people missed: America Online was only going after the high-end user. The low-end of internet access was completely ignored.

He called it "Joe Sixpack."

I called it a massive opportunity.

Mark joined NetZero as CEO and Chairman. The vision was free internet access in return for a toolbar with ads every 30 seconds.

The cost of telecom to keep users online would be offset by ad revenue.

They took the company public with the third largest IPO of 1999.

Raised $194 million and by market close, NetZero was worth $3.8 billion.

The Nasdaq bubble burst dropped the market cap to $37 million.

But…

They acquired their arch rival Juno Online and created United Online in September 2001.

A major financial newspaper called the merger “two skunks trying to breed a mink.”

The skunks became the top small cap stock on Nasdaq in 2002 and 2003.

They went from $1.84 to $15.31 in just over a year. $36.67 a year after that.

United Online generated a cumulative $1.65 billion in EBITDA, returned $568 million to investors in cash dividends, and acquired 15 companies.

That newspaper was right.

Mark bred a mink.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Some people have a really difficult time ever being wrong.

I've gotten over all that. It's okay to be wrong sometimes.

You fail at something, you still wake up the next morning. Full day ahead. You can do something else.

It's okay.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

A company that changed loyalty marketing forever and most people have never heard of it.

Netcentives.

Eric Tilenius and Elliott Ng came to Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1996 with an idea inspired by United Airlines frequent flyer miles.

Their pitch was that all consumer businesses would benefit from online couponing. And those coupons might even be used to trade for miles, dollars, or goods and services.

Draper took a bet on two newly minted business school grads and their crazy
plan to use frequent flyer miles to drive promotional and loyalty marketing on the World Wide Web.

They wound up partnering with:

→ Every leading airline in the country
→ Major deals with Visa, AOL, Barnes & Noble, AmEx
→ Nearly every leading e-tailer except Amazon

The company went public on the Nasdaq in 1999 at a market cap of $372 million and eventually reached over $2 billion.

According to founder Eric Tilenius "Netcentives would not have been possible if it was not for the support and backing of Tim Draper and his funds. Tim's funding and guidance came at a critical time and enable us to launch what became, at the time, the biggest incentive marketing firm on the web."

What’s the Netcentives of today? Let us know… we’d like to invest.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

This is my friend Surbhi Sarna.

She came to Draper University in 2012.

She had painful ovarian cysts as a teenager, but doctors didn’t have tools that could detect cancer without harming the ovaries.

She studied molecular biology at UC Berkeley. Then came to DU.

Then she built nVision around a fiber optic line product that could go up the fallopian tubes to detect cancer without harming the ovaries.

Her medical device got FDA approval and nVision sold for $275 million to Boston Scientific.

200,000 women worldwide die each year from ovarian cancer. Early diagnosis by nVision can save many of these lives.

Incredibly proud to have invested in Surbhi, her mission and her product. She is one of the poster star heroes from Draper University and we will always be grateful.