Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Great WSJ Piece: To Increase Jobs, Increase Economic Freedom

This is a fantastic article of where we are and what needs to be done.  More Freedom = Richer Nation.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

BizWorld Foundation Education Riskmaster Luncheon w/ Jennifer Johnson

Please join us on December 13th as we celebrate another year of inspiring kids to think big!    Our "Riskmaster" this year is Jennifer Johnson, Chief Operating Officer of Franklin Resources (AKA Franklin Templeton Investments).   

Friday, October 21, 2011

Great ideas from Warren Buffett regarding Congress aligning with the public

In a recent interview with CNBC, Warren Buffett offered the following quote about the debt ceiling:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC.  "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months and 8 days to be ratified!  Why?  Simple! The people demanded it.  That was in 1971, before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land, all because of public pressure.


Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn, ask each of those to do likewise.  In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1) No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when out of office.
2) Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.  It may not be used for any other purpose.
3) Congressmen can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4) Congress will no longer vote itself a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5) Congress loses its current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6) Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7) All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.
The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.


Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

I would add that any increase in Congressman’s pay be tied to GDP growth instead of CPI.

Monday, October 17, 2011

At YeePay's Headquarters

Fast travel in China

Entering the bullet train from Changzhou to Shanghai. Fast!

Singapore and the TechVenture Conference

View over the infinity pool at the Sands Hotel in Singapore. The TechVenture Conference was a resounding success. Forty novel start ups presented to about 700 people.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Half a Mile Up

View from the top of the tallest building in the world.

Future Entrepreneurs of the MENA region

Muslim women getting educated at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. Future entrepreneurs of the MENA region.

Doha Skyline

This country shows promise.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

In Dubai:

Mob looking to catch a glimpse of Kim Kardashian at the Dubai Mall.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Palo Alto International Film Festival

 I spoke at the Palo Alto International Film Festival about the future of media. My apologies to the group.  I was late. 

Friday, September 23, 2011

Palo Alto Film Festival

Come see what's playing:

Billy's short Take Your Child to Work Day 
Jesse's No One Will Know
Dad's Something Ventured 

Buy tickets here!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Palo Alto Film Festival

Jesse’s movie is doing a preview screening at the Palo Alto Film Festival!!!    She recently produced and starred in a movie called "No One Will know".  She worked incredibly hard on the film and is very excited because we are having our first premiere sneak preview screening at the Palo Alto International Film Festival on Friday, September 30 at 10:00 PM at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto. 

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

APL basketball shoes

“Wow! My sons and I tried the APL basketball shoes and they are awesome.”

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Ending the Deficit

Warren Buffett presented his quick and easy solution to Americas debt problem today on CNBC:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

Thursday, July 28, 2011

My recent address to the Commonwealth Club

Scheduled to air locally this evening  at 7 p.m. on KLIV, AM (1590).   Audio link here.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Dealmaker Spotlight Interview

"By my watch we are three years into the next VC wave, led
by social networking, wireless communications and apps."

TIMOTHY C. DRAPER 
Founder and Managing Director
Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Tim Draper shared his passionate views with Global M&A Network about the globalization of the VC community, the DFJ Network for sourcing deals and recent investments, the downside of IPO exit and adverse effects of Sarbanes Oxley, the need for American  government to change and drive entrepreneurship, along with his personal experiences with leaders from Singapore, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, Chile to grow the VC ecosystem.


Q: As an insider, how has the Silicon Valley venture capital community evolved in the last decade?

Mr. Draper: Most significantly, the Silicon Valley has gone global. There are Silicon Valley model ecosystems everywhere from Hyderabad to Shanghai, Boston to Singapore. DFJ, through the DFJ Network has set up relationships and offices all over the world to try to support entrepreneurs wherever they may be. We knew that with the information and communications revolution, entrepreneurs could start up businesses anywhere. For us, one turning point was when Sabeer Bhatia sent an email to India, and within three weeks we had 100,000 Hotmail subscribers in India. We knew then that the world would have near perfect information, and the opportunities to start businesses in new regions would explode.

Q: Do you believe that there a tech bubble presently and how is it different from previous cycles?

Mr. Draper: I actually designed something I call the “Draper Wave.” It is more an emotional curve than an actual data driven one. But it shows that since the late ‘50s, when my grandfather was a pioneer VC, it seems that every 8 years there is a VC wave, followed by a PE (or leveraged wave). It is as though each generation starts by creating jobs by starting businesses, builds up a frenzy of activity, reaches full employment in a crescendo, and then loses confidence, and the bubble pops, at which time the leveraged buyout industry goes in and restructures and remakes those companies until the leverage outpaces the growth, and then there is a recession, and people lose their jobs and the cycle starts again.  For example in 1983, Apple, Arthur Rock were each on the cover of Time Magazine before the VC crash in 1984, and then the LBO world brought us RJR Nabisco in 1990, and Michael Milken being thrown in jail in 1991. Then the VC business came through with the Internet revolution, which peaked in 2000, and popped in 2001. Then the PE business rose until the crash of 2008. By my watch we are three years into the next VC wave, led by social networking and wireless communications and apps.

Q: So, presently, there is no need to fear a "tech bubble"?

Mr. Draper: I expect to have 3 more years before there is another “bubble of any kind,” and as long as people fear a bubble, there will not be one.

Q: In your observation, what pressures are faced by mature tech companies to buy assets, example Microsoft deal with Skype?

Mr. Draper: In the specific case of Microsoft, buying Skype was brilliant. They spent 4% of their market value to become the world leader in long distance telecommunications. They acquired half a billion customers overnight. They might even be able to build some synergies. That all from a company whose growth has been flat for a decade.In general, technology is fluid and changing. Moore’s law is accelerating. New platforms and change is accelerating. Incumbents must adapt, acquire or innovate, or they will be left behind.


Q: Which of your recent investments excites your imagination today?

Mr. Draper: We are very excited about a couple of recent investments we have made. One is Tango (it takes two to Tango). Tango is Skype for wireless devices, where you can do video calls without having to schedule them ahead of time. The other is Do@. Do@ is a wireless search tool that allows more relevant and efficient search from a wireless device. You really have to try it. It is great fun.

Q: What global markets are you focused on and why?

Mr. Draper: I think it is important for a venture capitalist to roam around a bit to seek out new countries for VC ecosystem acceleration. I like countries that have new leadership and understand that they are in competition for the great minds and capital of the world. I think the US may be resting on its laurels here.  Since Sarbox (Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002), all I have seen is animosity toward business in the US, where as many of the other countries have shown real plans to encourage the VC ecosystem. Singapore, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, Chile all have leaders that have appealed to me personally to help them grow their entrepreneurship and venture capital environment.

Q: In reference to Sarbox—what creates the “animosity”? Also, why is US “resting on its laurels?”

Mr. Draper: Sarbox was set up by big government to watch over big business. It is expensive, and assumes that by overwhelming CEOs with paperwork and setting up independent groups to hear complaints by workers that that will keep bad apples from doing bad things, they will make our corporate world safe from those bad apples. It is ludicrous, and unnecessary, and painfully expensive for the smaller public companies. When was the last time you saw our government thanking the leaders of business for the great work they do to create wealth and pay taxes so that government can spend their money so people can be safer, better educated and better cared for? When was the last time an article stated that a CEO should be better paid for the great work they have done to build value for customers, employees and shareholders? This sort of thing is happening in other countries.We pay billions to educate the best and the brightest from all over the world in technology in our universities, and then we don’t let them work here, so they go back to countries that will have them. Our government spending is right up there with the most socialist countries. We allow unions to decide how our children are educated, to run our government, and to enforce our regulations.

Q: Can you provide examples of how the leaders in the countries mentioned -- Singapore, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, Chile are planning to grow their VC communities?

Mr. Draper: I can tell you what I learned in my travels.  President Yuschenko of Ukraine allowed me to be the first American to come to Ukraine without a visa. He then explained that although in the past it has taken 6 months and 23 bureaucrats to start a business, now it will be one bureaucrat and 5 days. In Singapore, I came up with a new idea for a stock market at breakfast, and at lunch I was sitting between the head of the Singapore SEC and the head of the Singapore stock market. In Vietnam, I met with the DPM and Finance Minister who told me that they were learning how to outdo China in attracting business. In Korea, President Lee told me that he hoped to attract more entrepreneurs and venture capital since they had laid out the best wireless infrastructure in the world in Seoul. Russian President
Medvedev and his team have offered DFJ a free office and free travel to Russia for our partners if we will help them set up a venture capital/entrepreneurial environment in Russia. I met with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, who discussed the privatization of Social Security in his country and the effect it had had on the entrepreneurial climate there.  In Malaysia, I saw ads for medical tourism, and in my discussions I learned that the government there is hoping to take advantage of a slow bureaucratic FDA in the US, where people will come to Malaysia to get the most modern treatments. Even President Sarcozy of socialist France just put together an eG8 conference to get a handle on the Internet and bring entrepreneurs to his own country.

Q:  In your experience, what are the nuances of investing in global markets?

Mr. Draper: I have found that entrepreneurs are the key here. The governments can make it harder to do business somewhere, but the best entrepreneurs are those who have a vision of the future and they cannot help themselves from pursuing it against strong odds. These are the people I look for. Where they are is secondary.


Q: What are the challenges facing America today and is there a role to be played by the VC community?

Mr. Draper: If America wants to keep its edge, it must do away with public employee unions. Why the taxpayer has to pay a premium for a government worker is beyond me! These unions are an ongoing drag on the education system, on worker motivation, and on our country’s economic value and growth. The VC community’s goal is to make money for their investors while supporting entrepreneurs in their visions. They will go to the countries that are the most attractive.

Q:  So, would you agree that America is not a top destination for VC today in the global context?

Mr. Draper: No. I like America. I think there is hope. But we need to wake up and smell the competition. Our government is in competition with the other countries of the world for the businesses of the world, and if we don’t respond to that competition, we will lose industry after industry. We do have the best free speech in the world. We do have freedom of religion. We do have a right to bear arms and protect us from government overstepping. But we also have an inefficient and hungry government that is soaking up valuable resources that the private sector can do so much more with.

Q: In an increasingly competitive environment, how do you source your deals? Is your due diligence process detailed?

Mr. Draper: At DFJ, we have a real edge in deal sourcing. It is our DFJ Network. Our network allows all the members to see opportunities that are not available to provincial VCs. We see every trend happening, and we see them in multiple locales. So it is up to us to make sure we back the right people, and help guide them in the right directions.We do thorough due diligence on all our companies, but as the market for entrepreneurs heats up, sometimes we have to just do our best and with incomplete information, go with our gut.

Q: How do you define market share and what is the relationship style between DFJ and its portfolio companies?

Mr. Draper: Ever since I stumbled upon the concept of viral marketing, we at DFJ have made it our business to make sure we take full use of virality. I think this is one of the areas where we stand out. I think all VCs do most of the other things we do, business modeling, monitoring progress, managing entrepreneurs (if that is possible), etc.  Each partner has his own style, and all partners help to improve the portfolio in any way they can, whether on the board or not. I like to help the companies with their viral marketing approaches and help the entrepreneurs with how to put to work the resources they have.

Q: In your experience, what are the top action steps for an effective "viral marketing"?

Mr. Draper: Every company is different. It isn’t action steps, it is a way of thinking. How do you get your customer to help you spread your service? It falls under the category of business modeling. Marketing costs can be lowered if there is some leveraged way of reaching a lot of customers.

Q: What is DFJ preferred exit strategy presently?

Mr. Draper: We tend to invest for the long haul. Interestingly, we tend not to want to exit our companies if they are doing well. We like the compounding effect of riding our winners.

Q: How do you define “long haul”; and if you were to exit, what is your preferred strategy?

Mr. Draper: Well, our partnerships are 10 years with 4 one year extensions, I guess we are talking about a 14 year time horizon for each fund. Current exits have real downsides. Mergers usually mean that the original visionary loses his ability to pursue his vision, and many people lose their jobs as companies get more efficient.IPO’s have the downside of higher regulation, and more scrutiny by small, unsophisticated shareholders. Companies that do IPO’s usually lose their best board members because of the liability attached to them, and they also get shareholder lawsuits since any shareholder of one share can call for a class action lawsuit for any reason. Sarbox and other regulations have added the problem of being so expensive to the company that companies have to be very large to justify going public, so there is little liquidity available if a company pursues this path.  We saw these problems and helped create a new alternative. An XPO. Xpert Financial has gotten SEC approval to do XPOs, private IPOs for companies who want to raise money from the same institutions that the public companies use, and have some outlet for shareholders who want liquidity at better prices than they can get in the secondary markets.

Q: How do you cope through the ups of the markets?

Mr. Draper: When the going gets tough…the tough get going. When the business gets too easy, we sell.

Q: Finally, what book are you currently reading?

Mr. Draper: The Start Up Game, by Bill Draper, my father. I reread it regularly. It is the tone and voice of the book that helps people understand a better way to live their own lives. My father has a very positive outlook that can be contagious to anyone who reads the book. He is awesome.


deal make r  SPOT•L IGHT©.  Published weekly on-line by Global M&A Network, LLC
Subscribe to access in-depth profiles from influential executives worldwide. visit www.globalmanetwork.com

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Living it up at the Ritz in Paris -- Why socialism doesn’t work

I was invited by President of France and current President of the G-8, Nicolas Sarkozy to come to Paris to advise him on the Internet before he went on to lead the G-8 session in Deauville. It turned out that he had invited 1500 other people to this “eG8,” but I felt very special at the time. When my wife heard the word “Paris,” I soon realized that this was going to be a romantic splurge and we blocked out a week at the Ritz before I put the letter down.

We flew AirFrance Business Class (incidentally, there is no First Class on AirFrance), and our bags marked “Priority” in the USA came out on to the carousel in France after about 45 minutes, which was after most of the bags with no “Priority” marking. The driver said that was typical.

When we arrived at the Ritz, jet-lagged and ready for showers, two porters aggressively took our bags, saying, “Ah, monsieur and mademoiselle, we will take care of these for you.” “Thank you,” we answered leaving them to check in. We were handed a sort of an odd shaped electronic key (which worked some of the time), and a very nice woman showed us to our room. The room was beautiful, although a little worse for wear. Before she left, I asked where our bags were, and she replied, “They will be up here soon, monsieur.” After about a half hour, we started getting concerned. We didn’t want to take showers, because we had nothing to change into. So I called down to the lobby, and asked politely about our bags. “Of course, they will be right up monsieur,” was the response I got. A fter another 15 minutes, I called down again with a little more edge to my voice. The same person responded, “Yes, they are on their way up now, monsieur.” Another 5 minutes, and I called again, now enraged. “I will check on them, monsieur.” Two minutes later a young bag carrier, different from the two men that took our bags originally, came up winded with big apologies and with our bags. Apparently, the bag receivers were different from the bag deliverers and the two had had a communications issue. But each had a specific job, which they had done according to the job description.

With great relief, we took our showers, and got ready for a delightful walk to a nearby brasserie. At the brasserie, we ordered a couple of delicious looking macaroons and some hot chocolate from the nice girl at the counter. She asked, “Would you like to sit down?” I said, “That would be great.” So she said, “Well, in that case, you will have to order from the waiter off the menu.” She then handed us a piece of paper with some writing on it. We went in, sat down, and had some delicious cut vegetables and bread, and also, once we figured out that we needed to give the waiter the paper, got some hot chocolate and some macaroons. Apparently, the girl at the counter could not sell hot chocolate and macaroons to us if we were going to be sitting down. That was the waiter’s job.

At the “eG-8,” I entered a large tent (a structure made specifically for this event). There were 1500 people gathered under the tent, and it was very hot and very stuffy in there even though outside the day was cool and comfortable. But we all suffered through it since we were all so honored, and now more curious as to why we were invited to this event. President Sarkozy, with sweat dripping from his very red face gave us a long speech that started out telling us that he understood that we all wanted the Internet to be free and that a free internet was good for the global economy, but then he went a little sour with me saying that he needed to know from us how he best could regulate the internet for privacy, cyber terrorism, intellectual property protection and the like. (I notice that under the cover of words like “national security” and “protection from terrorism” a lot of government entities find ways to control and regulate us.) Then it got worse. He said that after he figured out how we would recommend that he control the internet in France, he would bring his plans to the G-8 and discuss how they would all work together to control the internet. And after that, rising to a crescendo, he said, “We hope to take this to the G-20 and ultimately to the UN General Assembly!” I hope the other leaders are smart enough to dodge this bullet.

Well, maybe it was the heat, but I was starting to chafe. I was stuck in the third row, middle (a place of honor with “priority” written on the seat), and I couldn’t get out. And it was getting really hot and stuffy in there. It felt like the tent was short on oxygen. I thought of the prisoners that were put in those heat boxes in World War I. I took off my jacket to reveal my drenched and darkened shirt, and the very nice person to the left of me who ran marketing for Chanel (and would never take off his jacket in this setting) looked at me with great tolerance, knowing that his own heat experience just got a little smellier. Eventually, I found an opportunity to get to the aisle, where I reached a woman who worked for the conference, and asked her if there was anything she could do about the heat. “I don’t know,” she responded looking around as if there was nothing she could do. “Can you let someone know?” I asked. She shrugged as if to say, “I am only here to guide you to your chairs. Someone else is in charge of temperature control, and I don’t want to tread on their turf.” So, I went over and opened a few doors to the outside, and the room, at least the micro climate near the door, cooled off a little.

Then there was a break, and the group escaped to the outside where the day was gorgeous and pleasant, and I was thrilled to get a chance to meet some of the rest of the group. If this was not going to be a one-on-one with President Sarkozy, it would be a great networking event (and by the way, it was! But that is a different story.)I went to get a glass of water from a bartender standing behind a spectacular spread of delicious French food. He was busy pouring coffee, so I reached for the water to do it myself. “Ah NO Monsieur, that is MY job,” he shouted and gave me a look as though I had put a greasy hand on the Mona Lisa. So I dutifully waited until he finished pouring the coffee and then he poured me a half glass of water.

After the event, my wife and I were outside the Ritz asking about a taxi to take us to the restaurant that we loved so much when we were in Paris 15 years ago, Taillevent. The valet explained that it would be another 15 minutes because the taxi would need to be called, even though we could see that there were taxis with no passengers flying by all the time. The taxi caller would of course be upset if the taxi would be hailed by anyone but him. I actually tried to flag down a taxi, to no avail, as drivers seemed to accelerate by me as I tried.
Our dinner at this very expensive restaurant was again delicious. But there was something different about the waiters. 15 years ago, we sat at a table in the middle of the room, and the waiters seemed to come out of nowhere. When I had spilled my soup, I remembered that within 90 seconds, we had an entirely new meal in front of us on a new white tablecloth. It was like magic. This time, the waiters wandered around in the middle of the room while all the tables faced in toward them. It was clearly an easier job for them, but a little distracting for us as we tried to make goo goo eyes at each other. There was the wine waiter, and the dinner waiter and the dessert waiter and one waiter who didn’t seem to do anything but shuffle back and forth. We had a delicious dinner and dessert that went down like butter, and then we asked for the bill. Well it turned out that one waiter delivered us the bill, and I offered him my credit card. He walked away embarrassedly, and eventually the waiter whose job it was to accept the credit card came out to take back my credit card. Then the waiter that called taxis came out and asked us if we needed a taxi.
Don’t get me wrong. We loved Paris. We met some wonderful people. We ate like kings. We saw Versailles. I even came to a conclusion on why France would rather have preservation than progress. It actually makes sense that France is a Socialist country. France is a work of art, not to be disturbed by progress.

Here is my theory. City planner, Baron Georges-Eugene, in the mid 1850s built a masterpiece. An “entrepreneur” (a French word, by the way) would look at Paris and decide that all he could do is screw it up. It must be disheartening for some. But if you are French, you might look at it this way:
Your great grandfathers built the most beautiful city in the world. Enjoy it. It cannot be made more beautiful, so enjoy it. Yes, it could be more convenient, it could be more efficient, it could be more of a lot of things, but it could not be made more beautiful. And it is done. The artists’ signatures are on it. You could not build it or anything like it today. Adding to it would destroy it. So live well, revel in the past when your great grandfather was the king of the world. C’est la vie.

The French say a lot about “culture.” What they really mean is, “We live in this work of art. Don’t touch it.” The unionism is strong and it makes them feel better about living in a work of art, where no one makes any significant change, where people just do their job as a part of that work of art, and no one is allowed to be treated any differently from anyone else.
So now, I am heading back home on AirFrance, and there is a fairly large shard of glass in my shrimp cocktail. The nice stewardess says, “I am so sorry Monsieur. So awful.” She seemed really confounded. I think she wondered why no one had the job of watching-out-for-glass-in-the-shrimp-cocktail.

I have had the most delicious meals of my life (maybe all the entrepreneurial spirit has been channeled into that awesome crepe Suzette), and taken in the most gorgeous sites that all seem to be staged as part of a living painting, but I know I have to wake up soon.

It is with mixed feelings that I head back to the rest of the world, where no city is so beautiful that it can’t be improved upon.

Viva la entrepreneur!
And for those of you who still don’t get why socialism doesn’t work, it is because under socialism (or unionism), everyone does their job and no more, they have no incentive to do more (in fact there is a disincentive in most unions), and even if everyone does their job well, not all jobs will cover every eventuality, and you might eat some glass with your shrimp cocktail.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Cambridge Fashion Start-Up UsTrendy Gets $1 Million In Funding

Fashion site UsTrendy sews up ~$1M from Draper Read more: Fashion site UsTrendy sews up ~$1M from Draper | Boston Business Journal
It's safe to say the fashion industry does not see Sam Sisakhti coming. But the 28-year-old Brandeis graduate has about $1 million from a Sand Hill VC, and a plan to get egg all over someone’s Dolce & Gabbana glasses.



Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Italian Innovation Day at Stanford

Pictures of me and Scott Sandell as we spoke at and Judged Italian Innovation Day at Stanford. Some great companies from a prosthetic hand to kite energy.


Thursday, March 31, 2011

Lupita Island in Africa

San Francisco Chronicle's SFiS magazine did a nice article on my investment in Lupita Island in Africa. The place is gorgeous! The service is top notch; a very comfortable experience.  

Monday, March 28, 2011

Ski Race

Ski race in Deer Valley where Frank Creer enjoyed his finest moment on the slopes and edged me out.  (Sportscasting/Cinematography by Steve Jurvetson.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfGFXeylGYw

Monday, March 21, 2011

GenConnect at SXSW

My daughter @JesseDraper and I give a live performance at #SXSW for @genConnected http://bit.ly/gCMFG1

GenConnect at SXSW

See my 2.5 minute video from #SXSW @genConnected http://bit.ly/eqX0e1










Friday, March 18, 2011

Thursday, March 17, 2011

SXSW

First time to SXSW, and I discovered the Woodstock for Entrepreneurs. There are many wilder, but here is a post from my talk that ended at 1:30 in the morning. http://min.us/mvnI7hk#1.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Xconomy's VC65

Check out Xconomy's #VC65 at MIT during NVCA on April 6th: Celebrating 65th Anniversary of Venture Capital in America - http://bit.ly/dGpNlo

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Overthrow the Status Quo

Amazing! In speaking to a group of Stanford entrepreneurs, I blurted out “overthrow the status quo,” and then mentioned that it might make a good song. About 18 hours later, I got this great song from singer, songwriter Paul Bohan. He gives credit to the Jam-O-Matic from Connected Studios for the quick turnaround. Great tune.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Daytona 24 - Coulter Mulligan

My nephew, Coulter Mulligan is a talented race car driver. New to the sport, but drove impressively in the Daytona 24, a marathon team event.


Coulter didn’t do this. His race partner did.
 
 
.



Friday, February 11, 2011

Egypt

I am so excited by Egypt’s peaceful revolution. It is amazing to see what people can accomplish with great communications technologies. My taxi driver told me that he had escaped from Burma, and today he was jumping out of his seat on the hope that Burma might follow suit. Twitter, Hotmail, Skype, Facebook, Meebo…you are heroes!!! The world is a more peaceful, open, free and happy place because of you. Keep innovating. We still have a few totalitarian regimes to overthrow.



All this communication will make countries realize that they are in competition for the entrepreneurs and the capital of the world. Governments used to rule and control, now they have to sell and encourage people to work and live in their country. The USA needs to heed this call too.


Viva la revolution.


Tim Draper


Sunday, February 6, 2011

Wednesday, February 2, 2011