Tim Draper

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 indepthresearch.substack.com/p/understandin…

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

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

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

Meet Chad. He is a Georgetown University student and one of 30 semifinalists heading to San Mateo this week to pitch at America's Startup: our national competition giving student entrepreneurs a shot at $25,000 in funding and mentorship. youtu.be/aEkBnggN9N4?si…

Working with UT Dallas on developing their startup efforts. ⁦@draper_u⁩ dallasinnovates.com/ut-dallas-drap…

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.

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.

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.

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.

Batch 3 already. We continue to invest in the brightest founders building the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Join us live at 11 AM EST to see what these amazing teams have been working on @lxdev_ @OpenAgents @helios_finance @Resolvr_io @CharmsDev @PyrusFinancial

Join us today at 11AM EST for Demo Day of Batch 3 from @BTCFiNetwork. Meet the next wave of builders shaping the future of Bitcoin through DeFi, infrastructure, payments, and beyond. See you there. bitcoinfi.network/demoday

This is an awesome article on an amazing firm ⁦@BoostVC⁩ . Way to go Adam and Brayton. About time the world recognizes you as the top performing VC firm you are. blog.joinodin.com/p/the-frontier…

I built chatbot and voice versions of myself so founders can get feedback without waiting for my calendar. It stress-tests decks and filters the strongest pitches to my team. Was just featured byPitchBook. The tech has gaps but waiting for perfection costs more than starting now. Ship and utilize now. Fix and refine later. pitchbook.com/news/articles/…

I bought Bitcoin at $4. Or so I thought. Peter Viscenne had offered to mine it for me. He bought some fast mining chips from Butterfly Labs, but rather than delivering them to him, they used them to mine their own bitcoin. Then when Peter finally got the chips, Bitcoin was over $30. So he mined what he could. Then we lost all our Bitcoin to Mt. Gox when they “lost” the money. Since Bitcoin didn’t drop much on the Mt.Gox news, I did some research. It turned out that Bitcoin was being used for remitting money, paying unbanked employees, and creating economies where there weren’t any. So when I heard about the US Marshall’s auction, I bid over market at $632 and bought all nine lots offered. Got on Fox Business in 2014 and said Bitcoin would hit $10,000 in three years. The host looked at me like "Why did we have this guy on the show?" Three years to the day, Bitcoin hit $10,000. After that, my predictions have not been so prescient, but I have reason to believe that Bitcoin will reach $250k in 18 months… and eventually I expect the number to be higher as Bitcoin rises and the dollar falls to inflationary pressures.

We’re heading to Las Vegas. On April 27, during Bitcoin Conference week, I’ll be filming Meet the Drapers in partnership with BitGo. This is a chance to pitch on a global stage, get in front of top investors, and compete for up to $1M in funding. If you’re building in crypto, Web3, or blockchain, I want to see it. Apply by April 19: meetthedrapers.com/usa @meetthedrapers