Tim Draper founded Draper Associates, DFJ and the Draper Venture Network, a global network of venture capital funds. The firm’s investments include Skype, Hotmail, Tesla, Baidu, Theranos, Athenahealth, Solar City, Box, TwitchTV, SpaceX, Cruise Automation and Parametric Technology and many others.

He created viral marketing, a marketing method for exponentially spreading an electronic service from customer to customer, instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and Skype and other applications, particularly effective for mail and communications applications. Arguably, social media, crowdsourcing and growth hacking are all outgrowths of viral marketing.

He is regularly featured on all major networks as a proponent for entrepreneurship, innovative governance, free markets and Bitcoin, and has received various awards and honors including the World Entrepreneurship Forum’ s “Entrepreneur of the World” for 2015, and is listed as one of the top 100 most powerful people in finance by Worth Magazine, #1 most networked VC by AlwaysOn, #7 on the Forbes Midas List, and #48 most influential Harvard Alum.

In promoting entrepreneurship, he created Draper University of Heroes, a residential and online school based in San Mateo, Ca to help extraordinary people accomplish their life missions. He started Innovate Your State, a non-profit dedicated to crowdsource innovation in government, and BizWorld, a non-profit that teaches young children how business and entrepreneurship work. He served on the California State Board of Education, and led a movement for Local Choice in schools culminating in becoming proponent for a statewide initiative for School Vouchers. He also led a statewide initiative to create competitive governance with Six Californias.

Tim Draper received a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University with a major in electrical engineering and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.