An Evening with Timothy Draper, Venture Capitalist from Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Not many evenings can be as happening as the one today. Through the coordination of our friends, Bjorn Lee and Ming Yeow (both in Vietnam doing an internship), we were all gathered at Hog’s Breath cafe, Chijmes, to meet a famous venture capitalist, Tim Draper, founder of the global venture capital firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He is passing by in Singapore with his daughter, Jesse and they have been kind to give us the time to meet and have an informal gathering. He’s the creator of viral marketing that contributed to the successes of Hotmail.com. Other than Hotmail, he has made very good investments, for e.g. Skype and Baidu. We have asked him some interesting questions and if you want to know what his favourite investment is, then here you can follow us to find out what transpired.

First, who were there in the gathering? We have the enthusiastic young entrepreneurial students from Entrepreneur 27 (Justin Lee, Vinod, Royston) and The Digital Movement (Su Yuen, Jiahui, Zhen Hoe), entrepreneurs (Leonard Lin, Sivam Krish, Aileen Sim, William Claxton, Kelly Choo and Chandra) and some government officials from EDB and IDA. Of course, Gwen and myself could not miss out on this gathering. I have to say that Tim Draper is a charismatic chap and you can feel his energy and gungho flowing when you talk to him. So, we had a private table, packed with finger food and drinks.

So, I pitched the idea to Tim that we should do a speed dating session across the table such that everyone gets to talk to him. He was open to the idea, and we started the whole process going. In fact, he’s the timekeeper, and the whole process went through the next three hours. As we moved around the table, we also managed to catch up with each other about the recent events and buzz happening in Singapore. Our friends at The Digital Movement were already talking about their next event BlogOut! and asked for suggestions, while the E27 gang were talking about their new headquarters in NUS and of course, we talked about house warming. As usual, everyone asked me about the MDA fund, and our usual response is, “We are still finalizing the details, but we are hitting on something interesting.”

So, we went through the networking with a speed dating format, and Tim gave a quick speech, talking about his current experience in Asia. He gave us the avenue to ask him a couple of questions and even sang a song which he penciled the lyrics with a tune he bidded at an auction. You have to admire the man for being a good sport. Don’t worry, we got a video of the song, but I am not sure if our friends would be loading it up for all of you to see. A couple of interesting points were discussed:

• How did he start out as a venture capitalist?: Of course, his grandfather is William Henry Draper Jr., the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist founded Draper, Gaither and Anderson in 1959. The way he told us about how he got into venture capital and how he has managed to raise the funds and subsequently almost living on the edge before making 5 companies go IPO, not to mention his wife’s famous business plan where he shared it with us together with his daughter’s presence.
• His favourite investment?: It turns out to be Hotmail, because he started the viral marketing in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market. Yes, he even talked about the mathematical function that demonstrate how the spread goes. It’s a logistic function (granted BL’s past life as a theoretical physicist). He talked about how he managed to convince the engineer in Hotmail to set up the famous line, “Get your free email at Hotmail.”
• What is he looking out for?: His next big thing is encapsulated with the term “web 4.0″. He encouraged the entrepreneurs to seek out the thing which will become important and already virtual worlds are on his radar screen.
• What does Singapore need to get there: He spotted right on that we badly need a success story after Creative. He talked about Skype (from Estonia, Europe), Baidu (China) and described how many countries are now chasing US with new opportunities. Of course, he did talk about our upcoming casinos.
• His loyal secretary: Thanks to someone (see related links), he also related the story about how his first secretary stuck by him during the 1987 crash. That is why a lot of people don’t realize loyalty and credibility are important traits for successful business people.

So, what else? The pictures we have taken (above, Jesse Draper with all the guys) and of course, the good company we have (below, the group photo). Of course, we do look forward to seeing him again in Singapore, and perhaps, we should pitch to him in setting up a fund in Singapore.

Acknowledgments: Definitely Bjorn and Ming Yeow who managed to get this event up by the last minute. So, you can see how we are living on the edge. We have Vinod who has contributed to the pictures.

Related Links:
Tim of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, in Singapore! by whysgesucks
Thimerosa wrotes about her thoughts on the event.
Tim Draper in Singapore by Mike Lim, Cogito ergo sum.
Tim Draper not only funds, he sings too! by Entrepreneur27
The Dancing Tim by Justin Lee
Tim Draper — My IDOL! :) *swoon* by The Digital Movement

Editor’s Note: Article updated and corrections made.

Related posts:

1. A Whirlwind Interview with Timothy Draper