Latest news with #DraperAssociates
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bitcoin bull Tim Draper raises $200 million for new venture fund
One of the world's foremost Bitcoin boosters has drummed up another stash of capital. Tim Draper's investment firm, Draper Associates, has raised $200 million for its eighth fund, according to a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company's website, meanwhile, hints at the fund's launch. 'In 2025, Draper Associates celebrated 40-years of pioneering venture capital and spreading entrepreneurship around the world,' read a page about the firm's history. 'With the launch of Draper Associates Fund 8, the team has its eye on the next 40 years.' A spokesperson for Draper Associates declined to comment. In 2022, the venture capitalist raised almost $124 million for his seventh fund, according to a filing with the SEC. Draper Associates, which specializes in crypto investments, has $2 billion in assets under management, per the firm's website. The firm's latest raise comes amid a crypto boom. The total market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies crossed the $4 trillion mark for the first time in history last week as Congress passed legislation that will regulate stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar. And Bitcoin has repeatedly notched all-time highs over the past six months, surging past $120,000 Bitcoin OG Draper, who is 67 years old, hasn't always been synonymous with crypto. In 1985, he got his start as a VC when he borrowed $6 million to invest in tech, according to his website. He soon developed a knack for investing in what would become some of the world's hottest companies. The roster of startups he's backed includes Skype, Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX, Robinhood, and a host of other successful ventures. In 2014, Draper made one of his first public splashes as a Bitcoin believer when he paid $19 million to buy 30,000 of the cryptocurrency seized in the U.S. government's takedown of the notorious black market site Silk Road. The bet, which came at a time when many had written Bitcoin off as a failure, today stands as one of the shrewdest in history. Those coins are now worth around $3.5 billion. In the following years, Draper became one of the more outspoken cheerleaders for the world's largest cryptocurrency. He predicted in 2018 that Bitcoin would reach $250,000 by 2022 and, in 2023, repeated the same prediction for the end of that year. The cryptocurrency's price is still a far cry from that figure but, based on its recent performance, the idea of a Bitcoin being worth a quarter-of-a-million dollars no longer seems absurd. Draper has also invested in a host of other crypto ventures, including the U.S.'s largest crypto exchange Coinbase, the crypto wallet developer Ledger, and the prediction markets platform Polymarket. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire fund manager reveals two major red flags to avoid 90% of bad investments
Billionaire fund manager reveals two major red flags to avoid 90% of bad investments originally appeared on TheStreet. Billionaire fund manager Tim Draper has just shared his ultimate mantra to dodge bad investments. Well-known for his VC investments in Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, the Draper Associates founder recently warned against two red flags that he said discerning investors should avoid to save themselves from 90% of bad investments. The first red flag that Draper shared was a company following an easily imitable strategy. If one can Google more than 100 companies doing something similar, then it's a race to the bottom because someone will ultimately do it cheaper. The second red flag Draper revealed was regulation. He said he had seen the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "kill" startups because they "might someday look like an exchange."Notably, the SEC really went after crypto trading platforms for alleged securities violations over the last few years. Prominent crypto exchanges such as Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN), Kraken, Ripple, and Binance were not spared from the wrath of the federal securities regulator, which alleged that these platforms were offering unregistered crypto securities. These bitterly fought legal battles in the U.S. put a question mark on the status of leading crypto assets such as XRP, ETH, etc., as to whether they are securities or commodities. Since becoming the president in January 2025, Donald Trump has vowed to turn the U.S. into the "crypto capital of the world.' Taking their cue, the new SEC administration is retreating from an aggressive campaign waged by former Chair Gary Gensler. Both the administration and the industry seem to be working toward the shared goal of achieving increased regulatory clarity around crypto assets. Notably, the week of July 14th is 'Crypto Week' as the Congress considers the CLARITY Act, the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, and the GENIUS Act. How these bills progress will be decisive in the future of crypto assets not only in the U.S. but in the world. Draper said entrepreneurs should have more freedom, and regulators should step in only when there's "an actual reason." However, there is also a legitimate concern around the administration letting crypto firms run afoul, given the fact that the First Family's involvement with multiple crypto ventures has often raised eyebrows. Billionaire fund manager reveals two major red flags to avoid 90% of bad investments first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 14, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 14, 2025, where it first appeared.
Business Wire
11-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Ensemble VC Launches Comprehensive AI Tool to derisk venture capital investments, With Partners Ranging From Sand Hill Road VCs to Silicon Valley's Top Lawyers
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ensemble VC has developed and deployed a comprehensive system to derisk venture capital investments, with partners ranging from Sand Hill Road VCs to Silicon Valley's most respected law firm. Ensemble co-founder and data scientist Gopi Sundaramurthy spent five years developing 'Unity,' which ranks prospective portfolio company teams based on hundreds of objective data points. Unity then ranks teams — including teams with first-time founders — according to their likelihood of commercial success. Unity can then also help portfolio companies build teams with people most likely to excel in their roles, whether in biomanufacturing, machine learning engineering, downstream processing, go-to-market strategy, marketing and communication, HR or other functions. 'Leading venture capitalists are betting their limited partners' money on AI entrepreneurs. But the VC industry, for the most part, hasn't used AI itself to improve performance across all three major functions of its own industry — sourcing, selecting and servicing portfolio companies,' said Dr. Gopi Sundaramurthy, co-founder of Ensemble VC, former Head of Data Science at the Kauffman Fellows VC Fund, and the first data scientist at IBM Watson Health. 'We decided to tackle the trifecta.' VC firms Draper Associates, Boost, Overmatch and others are already collaborating with Ensemble to use the tool, which can be trained on specific investment niches — from SaaS to military tech, fusion and space exploration. And Silicon Valley's preeminent law firm, Wilson Sonsini, is also using Unity to assess which startup clients to pursue. 'No matter how vast your network, human constraints always limited your network and thus your deal flow and potential,' said Tim Draper, the third-generation VC and founder of Draper Associates (formerly DFJ), Draper University, and the hit TV show, Meet The Drapers. His investments include Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX, AngelList, SolarCity, Ring, Twitter, DocuSign, Coinbase and Robinhood. 'Unity helps eliminate the human constraints.' Derisking VC Unity scrapes millions of points on the Internet — from yesterday's X posts and SEC filings to alma maters, obscure details on LinkedIn, and stock performance on secondary markets — to assess founders, team members and anyone else on an early-stage team. Ensemble's system instantly generates navigable market maps, tracking deep networks of investors, employees, and founders as they move across industries. Unity searches dynamically — by investor, company, geography, and sector — ensuring that the firm doesn't miss entrepreneurs or their seed-stage, high-performing startups simply because they don't yet fit pre-existing patterns. Unity also tracks where talent is moving. The data platform provides a real-time view of technical talent flow, anticipating industry shifts before they materialize. This combination of direct technical experience and proprietary data insights gives Unity users an unmatched ability to spot and back the best companies before the market catches up. About Ensemble VC Ensemble VC is an early-stage investor based in Austin, TX. The firm takes a product-centric approach to investing, leveraging the firm's comprehensive data platform to intelligently and scalably support founders. Ensemble invests early in highly technical emerging technologies that span from AI to defense technology. For more information about Ensemble, please visit
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire fund manager has a blunt take on US dollar
Billionaire fund manager Tim Draper has a rather blunt take on the relationship between the US dollar and Bitcoin. "Bitcoin might be worth an infinite amount of USD," Draper posted on X on Apr. 1. Well-known for his VC investments in Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, the Draper Associates founder analyzed the historical trajectory of the USD in relation to the south's Confederate Dollar during the American Civil War. Draper said the Confederate Dollar began 1:1 with the USD, but at the end of the war, it ended with 10 million Confederate Dollars to 1 million USD due to hyperinflation. However, as the USD index dips to its "worst start to the year" in 40 years, faith in the USD may decline "much farther" amid escalating geopolitical tensions, Draper warned. "Bitcoin, on the other hand, will continue to have open and transparent record-keeping and be easy to store," the veteran investor bet on the largest cryptocurrency. "Governments are already hedging against this future by holding Bitcoin in their strategic reserves," Draper said, and added that unlike Bitcoin, gold has challenges such as storage, transportation, and payment mode. In the event of a systemic breakdown, one wouldn't want to rush to withdraw cash from the bank or hoard gold in their room, the fund manager warned. Instead, one should keep "enough Bitcoin" to hold their family for six months to a year, he said. "Bitcoin might last a lot longer" if hyperinflation happens, Draper said. As per Kraken's price feed, Bitcoin was trading at $96,792.82 at press time. It exceeded the $97,000 mark on the day after a two-month lull. Meanwhile, gold hit the record high of $3,500 per oz on Apr. 22. It was trading at $3,232.64 at the time of writing. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
