What is Tim Draper's Net Worth?
Tim Draper is an American venture capital investor with a net worth of $3 billion. Tim Draper is the founder of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He is also a highly successful investor in Bitcoin. Tim Draper famously paid just $19 million in 2014 for 30,000 bitcoins that US Marshalls had confiscated from the former operator of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht. Within a few years, those 30,000 coins had grown to be worth nearly $2-3 billion (assuming a BTC price of $60-90,000).
In early 2014, he filed a petition, which was accepted by California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen, to collect signatures to divide California into six smaller states, arguing that California is "increasingly ungovernable" as one state. On July 15th, 2014, backers announced that enough signatures had been collected to place the measure on the 2016 ballot. Some critics have suggested that the proposed initiative is a means of getting more Republican representation in California.
Early Life
Tim Draper was born on June 11, 1958 in California. The third in a line of venture capitalists, his father, William Henry Draper III, founded the Draper & Johnson Investment Company in 1962 and was chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. His grandfather, William Henry Draper Jr., founded Draper, Gaither, and Anderson in 1958. Draper's father was an early investor in Skype, which was eventually sold to eBay for $4.1 billion.
Draper attended Phillips Academy Andover and then enrolled at Stanford University, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1980. He then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1984.
Career
Draper began his career by working at an investment bank. Alex Brown & Sons. In 1985, Draper started his own venture capital firm. He was joined by his former colleague, John Fisher, who became a partner at the firm in 1991. He was then joined by Steve Jurvetson, who became the firm's third partner, in 1994. The firm then became known as Draper Fisher Jurvetson or DFJ.
Over the course of his career, Draper has made a number of high-profile investments. He was an early investor in Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia's company, Hotmail. He helped coin the term "viral marketing" over the course of his investment in the company, which grew significantly during this time.
Draper was also the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist to invest in China through the global fund DFJ ePlanet. In 2001, he negotiated with the CEO of the company Baidu to buy 28% of Baidu on behalf of ePlanet for $9 million. DFJ also invested in Skype in 2004. Draper was already familiar with the company as his father had been an early investor. DFJ owned 10% of Skype in 2005 when it sold to eBay for over $4 billion. In 2006, DFJ invested in the Series C venture round of Tesla. The following year, they again invested in Tesla's Series D venture round through Draper Associates.
In June 2014, Draper purchased almost 30,000 bitcoins for around $19 million. The bitcoins had been seized from the Silk Road by the US Marshals Service and were being auctioned to the public. In September of that year, he told Fox Business that he predicted the value of one bitcoin would reach $10,000 in three years. The price of a bitcoin did cross the $10,000 threshold in November of 2017.
He also invested in Twitch, the streaming platform. Draper's investment helped fund Twitch, which was later sold to Amazon for $1 billion. After investing in Twitch, the founder of the company, Kyle Vogt, took Draper for a ride in the Cruise Automation, a self-driving car. Though they nearly crashed, Draper was impressed by the experience. He decided to fund Cruise, which later was sold to General Motors for $1 billion.
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More controversially, Draper was also one of the first investors in the blood testing start-up Theranos, founded by Elizabeth Holmes. When Holmes was later charged by the SEC with committing massive fraud, Draper continued to defend her and claimed she had been bullied. Other companies in which Draper has invested include Robinhood, Coinbase, Tezos, eShares, and OpenGov. He has centered his more recent investments around companies that use artificial intelligence and other new technologies in the industries of health care, finance, and government.
Draper's career in venture capitalism has informed his political philosophy as well. He has spoken out in support of free markets and entrepreneurship. He has publicly stated that he is against Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, which mandate certain practices in financial record keeping and disclosure. Draper argues that such regulations make it more challenging for companies to become public.
In 2014, he also filed a petition with the California Secretary of State that allowed him to begin collecting signatures on a petition that wanted to divide California into six smaller states. However, the number of signatures it acquired fell short of the necessary amount to land on the 2016 ballot. He again put this initiative forward in April of 2018, though this time, he aimed to divide the state only into three smaller states. The petition collected a sufficient number of signatures to qualify as an initiative in the 2018 general election. However, the day before the ballots were sent to print, the California Supreme Court blocked the measure, and it did not appear on the November 2018 ballot.
Draper has also ventured into education. In 2013, he launched Draper University of Heroes. The school is an educational program that offers courses in entrepreneurship and brings in notable speakers working in business and entrepreneurship. The university offers a residential program that is based in San Mateo, California.
In 2017, Draper published "How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs." He then published "When a Venture Capitalist Enters California's Political Matrix: Innovation Meets the Status Quo."
Personal Life
In 1982, Draper married Melissa Lee Parker at the First Presbyterian Church of Burlingame, California. Together, the couple has four children: Jesse, Adam, Bill, and Eleanor. A couple of his children are working in venture capitalism as well, while the others have pursued careers in acting.
