Tim Draper

Trending.fm created this rockin video for all you Riskmasters out there. youtube.com/watch?v=TDtIIS…

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We back extraordinary founders challenging the status quo, and we create real alpha for our investors. The proof is in these VC rankings Feltsense put out of all the VCs and their AI vulnerable portfolios.

I'm 75% more productive than I was two years ago. All thanks to our incredible interns. At @DraperVC, we get around 200 pitch decks a week. That's a lot of founders, ideas, and decks to vet. Last summer, a group of interns built a feature on our website that let founders submit their deck and get AI-generated feedback before it ever landed on my desk. The AI catches things like inadequate market size or lack of a competitive moat. Now we're working on something where we use AI to comb through our data lake of hundreds of thousands of companies and replicate what I actually look for in a founder. Turns out that it’s really difficult. There are so many intangibles when you’re evaluating a person, but we’re getting there. I've learned that AI doesn’t make me want fewer people on my team. On the contrary, it makes me want more. Every person with AI becomes a much bigger version of themselves. The interns doing market research now do it better and faster than anyone I've seen before. The more you use AI, the more you realize what else you can use it for. Thanks to Inc. for covering. Check the comments for the full story.

I am so proud to announce the launch of DA8, another $300M we are putting to work into disruptive early-stage founders! 41 years in, and I love the job more every day. We relaunched @DraperVC 12 years ago. Since day one, we have continued to back founders who are willing to sound crazy. The ones who look at a broken industry, that hasn't been innovated on in 20+ years, and say, "I'm going to fix that, no matter what it takes." Over the history of Draper, we have been the first VC in companies like @Tesla, @SpaceX, Hotmail, @Twitch, @Skype, @Baidu_Inc., Bitcoin, @Coinbase, @Robinhood, @Oklo, @Polymarket, @XanaduAI, @iceye_global, @Colossal, and the list goes on. I remember the first time I met every one of those entrepreneurs, and the hundreds more we have funded over the years. At Draper, we look forward to funding more entrepreneurs who build unicorns and trinocorns (trillion dollar companies). What I've learned after four decades is simple. The greatest founders are those who feel that they have to do what they are doing. It was pre-ordained. Getting to help them and fund them early is the privilege of my work. To our new Limited Partners: we appreciate you for working with us on this important mission. We know it is only the boldest LP that sees the investment world as we do. To the founders coming to pitch us for DA8: we cannot wait to see the future you create. And to anyone building something the world isn't ready for yet, keep going. We are looking for you. Here's to DA8.

"You're not trying to find a cancer drug for a million people, not even 100,000. One." @Andytang joins For Your Innovation to discuss why personalized cancer treatment could flip the entire U.S. Food and Drug Administration model on its head.

Let's try something different in California. Let's move from Dark Blue to Purple. Click here. wapo.st/4eQSF2j And we should start by electing Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) as Governor.

My take on @SpaceX going public: → $75 billion raised → Largest IPO in history → Stock up 19% on day one. Elon has brought new life to the space and transportation markets. Transportation used to be the big three with very little innovation, and @Tesla opened our minds to what could be. Space used to be only what governments said it could be, and NASA only had the budget to keep itself in business, and SpaceX opened our eyes to extraordinary Star Trekkian possibilities. It got me thinking about what my friend Cree Edwards said about physics. Physics has been stuck in Einsteinian particles for almost a century with no real innovation. Cree Edwards theorized, “I think we are all energy.” So…not e=mc^2, but e=e. There is no such thing as mass. If you look at what an electron microscope shows as an atom, you might come to the same conclusion. More on that in my new book. The biggest returns don't come from the financial models, but rather from the moment a founder forces the world to see something differently. Elon did that with PayPal. He did it with Tesla and he just did it again with SpaceX. I think Elon and all those entrepreneurs who take on the status quo are going to really transform our universes in the next century. msn.com/en-us/money/ne…

Rosie Rios is a phenom. America 250 has taken on extraordinary life under her leadership, and we expect her Startup 250 to generate companies that define the next millennium! america250.org/news/america25…

Liya Ngabola, a student at Ensign College, is raising chickens and creating jobs in Zimbabwe. And she just won $20,000 at the 2026 Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge! Her company, Shurugwi Prime Breeders, raises chickens and creates jobs in Zimbabwe. The challenge awarded $75,000+ to student founders across the state, and 20 teams walked away with money, mentorship, and momentum. Young people aren’t just the future of entrepreneurship, they’re the present too! Congratulations to every team that competed and to the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah for running a great student entrepreneur program. Thanks to the Salt Lake Business Journal for covering the event! slenterprise.com/index.php/news…

I invested in Focused Energy because I believe fusion will power civilization. Last week they closed their Series A. The team is growing, the engineering is moving, and business development is opening doors. They're spinning out SourceLight, a laser-driven radiation-source business that's already attracting customers and investor interest. Chris and the team are doing the hard, unglamorous work that moves fusion from physics journals to the power grid. They're positioned to become the leading ICF company on the planet. Congratulations Chris and the whole Focused Energy team. I hope the money we invest helps you power the world.

I passed on Netflix. I passed on LinkedIn. Got outbid on Facebook. Sat next to Sergey and Larry on a plane, brought Google to my partners, and heard, "Draper, you've gotten us into six search engines. Why do we need another one?" People ask me about my failures all the time. I sat down with Nicole Petallides on Market Overtime last week and we covered all of it: → Why 7 of the 10 biggest companies in the world turn over every 20 years (and why that turnover is speeding up) → Robot "brains" that learn how to pour water without spilling it, the same way an LLM learns language → The shift in healthcare from chemical whack-a-mole to bio cures → Why every family should hold six months of Bitcoin, and why a treasurer or central bank without it is being irresponsible → The best advice I've ever heard anyone give an entrepreneur → And of course… my favorite failures of my career Thank you Nicole and the Market Overtime team for having me. schwabnetwork.com/video/tim-drap…

In the wake of the SpaceX IPO, with space being the final frontier, I think it is time for science to rethink their fundamental theories. This is the best view we have of atoms. There is a seemingly natural balance here. Those nuclei with two lights are plus charged. Those electrons with no light are negatively charged and those with one are neutral. If instead of looking at this as mass and energy, let’s just look at it as energy. As my friend Cree Edwards theorized, “we are all energy.” I think we will need to start looking at space in a new light for space travel to take another anthropological leap, but in the meantime, we have SpaceX. Go Elon!

I'm excited to announce that Draper Dragon's @orionfund is partnering with @draper_u to invest in 15 startups building on @cardano this summer! Applications close on July 10th. You don't want to miss this.

I love Elon Musk.. Almost as much as I love Satoshi Nakamoto. #spacex #bitcoin

I love Elon Musk.

We are super excited to share with you our initial release of Lucky Engine. We are building a robotics engine from the ground up to be what we wished we could find in a simulator before

Congrats to the OpenYield team on the $6M raise led by @levelmarkets Excited to be part of it with @DraperVC Bringing equity-style transparency, speed, and firm pricing to the $150T fixed-income market is exactly the kind of modernization bond trading needs. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…