Tim Draper

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

Pitch me: [email protected]

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

We back companies that bend industries.

Skype bent telecom. Hotmail bent communication. Tesla bent transportation.

The Tadros brothers are bending real estate with Bitcoin.

They built three homes in Liberty City and they’re the first Bitcoin-powered homes on Earth.

They recycle heat nine different ways and generate revenue with no tenants… just miners converting code into cash and warmth.

Excessive money printing priced out an entire generation from homeownership. Homes became something you dreamed about, not something you lived in. Bitcoin-powered homes flip that equation. Heat is free. Revenue flows in and the asset pays for itself.

Welcome to funding the rebellion.

https://t.co/28wDA9KLt5

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Honored to be a part of NewLimit’s journey from the very start.

Jacob Kimmel and Brian Armstrong are easy founders to get behind as is their mission to expand human life.

I backed Brian Armstrong before with Coinbase, and proud to do it again with NewLimit!

Within the next year, we’re expected to see new medicine that target the most pervasive condition there is… aging.

Congrats to their team on their recent $435M Series C.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Thanks to the Bentley University Investment Group for inviting me to give the keynote address!

Here’s the advice I gave:

𝗢𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽

→ Expect to pivot. No big business grew in a straight line.

→ Listen to customers and find out what they'll actually pay for.

→ Look for industries that are fat, lazy, and providing bad service at high cost (often the ones advertising on TV).

→ Use new technologies to disrupt those industries

→ Love your first customer, make them happy, then the next. They become your salesforce.

→ Make lots of deals; every good deal makes both parties better off.

→ Missionaries (those driven by mission) outperform mercenaries (those chasing money).

𝗢𝗻 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆

→ Do the hardest thing first every day.

→ Don't procrastinate, it kills innovation.

→ Make short-term sacrifices for long-term success.

→ Strive to be the best. #1 makes money.

𝗢𝗻 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

→ Ask stupid questions. The stupider the question, the more you learn

→ Go gain knowledge before implementing your creativity.

𝗢𝗻 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 & 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆

→ Want your friends to succeed, even more than yourself because you want to be surrounded by successful, dynamic people.

→ Cheer everyone around you on.

𝗢𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲

→ Failure by omission is often the biggest mistake (missing opportunities).

→ Even if you fail, you moved the ball forward for everyone.

→ Keep your ego in check on both success and failure.

𝗢𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 & 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀

→ Finance is the difference between success and failure, it's not meaningless.

→ Don't count your money before you get it.

→ Give customers a little more than you take. It pays off long-term.

𝗢𝗻 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗼𝗺 & 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆

→ Free countries enable innovation. Lack of freedom kills it.

→ The best leaders set clear guidelines and trust their people to innovate.

→ Competition between governments keeps them accountable.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

So excited about my latest investment in education with Edvisor (https://t.co/xaMisyxJ6b)! They're shaking up higher ed at institutions like Berkeley, Duke and 50+ others!

The $200B educational materials market has barely changed in decades, and there is an enormous opportunity to transform the industry.

When an industry operates as a monopoly or oligopoly and provides poor service at a high price, there is an opportunity for a startup to take new technology and have a forcing function that makes the customer (the student) receive a better service for a lower cost. Edvisor is doing just that.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

I found Skype in a newspaper article.

The two guys who started Kazaa were building something new using the same file-sharing technology, but for a completely different purpose.

I asked Howard Hartenbaum to have a look for me. He did and told me I should get out to London to meet them.

I met Niklas Zennström in a London pub. He walked me through his plan to build a network of shared Wi-Fi. The business was called Shyper.

I was impressed enough to offer to fund him and his partner, Janus Friis.

He called a week later with a change of plans…

"Change of plans. We are going to go after the long-distance carriers. Do you still want to invest?"

I said yes.

My partners had concerns about the file-sharing history, so I passed the seed to my dad, Bill Draper. I eventually funded Skype through DFJ ePlanet Ventures, our first international fund.

When Skype had three million audio users, I flew to Tallinn for a board meeting. I asked Niklas to set up video conferencing equipment so I could interview him for a Tony Perkins event in Palo Alto. After the interview, Niklas laughed and said: "That was the first Skype video call ever."

I hadn't even known they were working on video.

Skype sold for $4.1 billion to eBay in 2005.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

See this article. I am a big fan of Gurudev. He spoke at our annual meeting. His breathing techniques have become standard practice at Draper University survival training.

https://t.co/L1Vrxi1VEo

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Before I was an investor, I was a guy carrying someone else's pitch deck around town.

The company, Tasvir, used a computer to work with 2D mechanical CAD. We couldn't get investors to bite, but I learned a lot about mechanical CAD and the customers’ need for a new kind of MCAD.

I asked Ian Edmonds, the marketing VP at Apollo Computer, what software mattered most for Apollo hardware. He pointed me to Polygen and SPG Consulting. I funded both, and while Polygen worked out ok, SPG Consulting became a bonanza.

I met Sam Geisberg, and he showed me what he called, “reflexive technology,” the ability to flip between 2D and 3D mechanical drawings easily.

As a software engineer myself, I couldn't figure out how he did it. It genuinely blew my mind.

I introduced Sam to Don Fedderson, who was an MCAD expert, and Don brought in Steve Walske a fresh bright MBA. They added supersalesman, Richard Harrison as employee, and Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) was born.

PTC went on to become the dominant MCAD company in the world. More than 10 million mechanical designs have been created on their products including your cars, your hair dryers, probably the chairs you're sitting in right now.

When PTC went public, I was able to pay the entire SBIC loan and paid my family back, with interest.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Bitcoin is the largest idle asset in the world.

I backed Zest Protocol because they're the team putting BTC to work.

BTC-backed lending is a trillion dollar market and @ZestProtocol has the track record to win it.

[Zest Protocol @ZestProtocol]

$1.5T in BTC sits idle.

Borrowing against it without giving up custody changes that.

Zest Protocol lead investor @TimDraper on what the team means for the Bitcoin economy.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

I met Jim Hornthal in a pool.

He swam over and started talking so fast I had to ask him to slow down just so I could follow along.

Genius-level ideas, but coming out at 100mph.

Jim was building something around video and travel. He called it Preview Travel.

Jim wasn't building a travel company, but rather he was building a media company that happened to sell travel (right as the internet was about to make bandwidth cheap enough to make it work).

The company went through major pivots, went public, and eventually sold to Travelocity.

Jim had conviction and the ability to pivot without losing the thread.

The lesson?

I like to keep my ears open everywhere. Great entrepreneurs can happen in conferences, in airports, on the street, and even in water.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Thanks to Antoine Santi for having me on SantiTV.

We covered my personal story, the Draper family legacy and my vision for crypto and the future of innovation.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

52 pitches in 52 minutes. All below 40 degrees.

I've sat through thousands of pitches over 40 years inside conference rooms, coffee shops, Zoom calls, and pretty much any venue you could think of. The ones that stick out are the ones where a founder is so convicted they'll pitch through anything.

So… I took 52 pitches in 52 minutes sitting in an ice bath at below 40 degrees.

What I was watching for was the founder.

How do they carry themselves when conditions are uncomfortable? When the circumstances aren't ideal and the room (or in this case, the water) is working against them?

Pitching through stress is practice for everything that comes after. For the moments, where inevitably, everything is harder than they thought it would be. Great founders push through it all to find success, and that's why founders are heroes.

I'm not a frequent cold plunger, but it was a fun experience! Next time, we need the Guinness Book of World Records there.

Have an idea you want me to hear? Meet me in the ice bath. 🧊

Thanks to Business Insider for covering:

https://t.co/ZDG3UJPr6c

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

I loved my conversation with Ilana Golan on The Leap Academy Podcast!

I joined Ilana and broke down how to spot world-changing ideas before they make sense, why most people miss their biggest opportunities, and how listening to your gut can be more powerful than logic alone.

I shared the lessons behind massive wins like Hotmail, painful misses like Netflix, and the mindset required to navigate uncertainty, fear, and reinvention.

Listen here: https://t.co/WtTtvlXfRq

[Hugo Finkelstein @hugfink]

Get paid → earn yield → withdraw in fiat or crypto.

Rise Earn is live.

Contractors & employees can now put their @rise_pay balance to work — redeemable anytime, zero DeFi complexity.

Your money shouldn't sit still while you wait to withdraw.

https://t.co/p4RirvnGZS

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Loved this article from Wala Kasmi at ClassX.

She argues that startup investment decisions are driven more from a psychological lens rather than a logical one.

Sometimes founders with no revenue raise millions while some with traction struggle.

I appreciate her sharing some of my thoughts around investment philosophy. Worth a read if you have time.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

I think I broke a record. I took 52 pitches in 52 minutes at below 40 degrees. Welcome to my office. #draperuniversity #survivaltraining

[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.