Timothy C. Draper

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**Timothy C. "Tim" Draper**
Born:	Unknown
Occupation:	Founder and Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ)
Spouse:	Melissa Draper
Website:	Profile at Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder of the global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He is third in a line of venture capitalists. His father, William Henry Draper III, founded the Draper & Johnson Investment Company in 1962, Sutter Hill in 1968, Draper International India in 1996, and Draper Richards in 2001, and his grandfather William Henry Draper Jr., the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist founded Draper, Gaither and Anderson in 1959.

Tim Draper is the creator of "viral marketing." 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 Yahoo! Mail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique to hundreds of businesses.

He invested in and contributed to Skype (acquired by eBay), Baidu, Overture (acquired by Yahoo!), Parametric Technology, Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Tumbleweed Communications, PLX Technologies, Digidesign (acquired by Avid), Preview Travel (acquired by Travelocity), Four11 (acquired by Yahoo!), Combinet (acquired by Cisco), and Redgate (acquired by AOL), among others.

Mr. Draper launched the Draper Affiliate Network, an international network of early-stage venture capital funds with offices in 34 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.

Mr. Draper is the course creator and Chairman of BizWorld, a 501c3 organization built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children.

Mr. Draper served on the California State Board of Education in 1998-9. He launched a statewide cyber-initiative on school choice for the California General Election in November of 2000.

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