Timothy Draper -
Founder, Managing Director

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His original suggestion to use “viral marketing” in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and YahooMail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique to hundreds of businesses. He invested in and contributed to Skype (EBAY), Overture.com (YHOO), Parametric Technology (PMTC), Hotmail (MSFT), Tumbleweed Communications (TMWD), PLX Technologies (PLXT), Digidesign (AVID), Preview Travel (TVLY), Four11 (YHOO), Combinet (CSCO), and Redgate (AOL), among others.

Mr. Draper launched the Draper Affiliate Network, an international network of early-stage venture capital funds with offices in 26 cities around the globe. He founded or co-founded Wasatch Ventures (Salt Lake City), Zone Ventures (LA), Draper Atlantic (Reston), Draper Triangle (Pittsburg), Timberline Ventures (Portland), DFJ EPlanet (global), Polaris Fund (Anchorage), Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham (NYC), DFJ Frontier (Sacramento and Santa Barbara), and DFJ Dragon (Shanghai). As an advocate for entrepreneurs and free markets, Mr. Draper is regularly featured as a keynote speaker in entrepreneurial conferences throughout the world, has been recognized as a leader in his field through numerous awards and honors, and has frequent TV radio and headline appearances. On behalf of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mr. Draper serves on the boards of Tagworld, SocialText, Glam, MailFrontier and Chroma Graphics. Mr. Draper is also the course creator and Chairman of BizWorld, a 501c3 organization built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children. He served on the California State Board of Education. In November of 2000, Mr. Draper launched a statewide cyber-initiative on school choice for the California General Election.

He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.