It’s official. @DraperDragon $80m @OrionFund is open for business. And Draper University is leading the programs that help find and uplift the earliest builders. The fund is built to turn Cardano's technical leadership into global, venture-scaled growth. We are searching for the founders who will drive the next $3b in TVL. > tier 1 first VC check (up to $90k) > elite programming > investor networking > free housing in Silicon Valley > leverage the massive Draper ecosystem in web3 Applications for our first cohort are now open. Link below 👇. @Cardano_CF @Cardano

Our work with Orbital Edge continues 🚀 Draper University is proud to support the 2026 Orbital Edge Accelerator, powered by the @ISS_CASIS, alongside @DraperVC and a growing network of global investors and industry partners. Now in its second year, Orbital Edge has grown from 6 to 8 startups, with $500K-$750K in available funding per company, plus expanded access to in-space testing, mentorship, and industry expertise. The next frontier needs founders, and we’re helping them build. Learn more: issnationallab.org/press-rel…

Tim Draper has been named to the @Forbes 250: America’s Greatest Builders. 🇺🇸 Created in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, the list recognizes 250 living entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, and builders who have helped shape the country. Forbes ranked Tim at #183, highlighting his early bets on @Tesla and @DocuSign. Across more than four decades in venture capital, Tim and @DraperVC have backed companies and technologies that went on to define entire industries, including @SpaceX, @Twitch, @RobinhoodApp, @Coinbase, @Oklo, @Polymarket and @colossal, alongside Tim’s early conviction in Bitcoin. For us at Draper University, the word “builder” is especially fitting. Tim has spent decades backing entrepreneurs willing to bet on ideas before they were obvious, while building an ecosystem designed to help the next generation do the same. Congratulations, @TimDraper! 🚀 Read the full Forbes 250 list⁠: forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2…

My first conversation with Michael Thompson who is on the board of @jobyaviation ($JOBY) and @oklo ($OKLO). He previously started Reinvent Capital with @markpinc and @reidhoffman where he was Managing Partner and made early investments in the physical economy through Joby, SpaceX, Nimble Robotics, Oklo and many other companies. This is a special edition of We The Builders conversation from @reindsummit earlier this summer. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 02:35 From hedge fund to physical-world techonolgies 03:45 "Where is all this power gonna come from?" The case for nuclear 04:50 Why nuclear stalled 07:05 Where AI value will accrue: physical-world technologies 07:55 "Recursive industrialization": SpaceX, Cursor & frontier models 09:15 Joby: amplifying world-class engineers with AI 10:50 Does eVTOL need a charging network like Teslas? 11:30 Breaking down the Joby aircraft: airframe, controls, powertrain 18:55 Why these companies need vertical integration and technical founders 20:25 How to value SpaceX and Joby (it's not next year's EBITDA) 22:25 Why Joby went public through a SPAC 23:50 "Henry Ford never built a mile of road": financing the infrastructure 25:15 FAA certification is like FDA approval 27:35 Reinvent Capital and the "1870s thesis" 28:55 Nimble: specialized robots and forward-deployed training data 30:25 What he's changed his mind on

Big news from the DraperU Ventures portfolio! Congratulations to @BioDelivera on joining @ycombinator's Fall 2026 batch! Founded by twin sisters @OTrashi and @ikeda_trashi, BioDelivera (YC F26) is tackling one of biotech’s biggest challenges: delivering medicines efficiently, reproducibly, and specifically to the right tissue. From completing their PhDs to moving to San Francisco and going all in on the company. Now they’re taking the next step with YC. Proud to have BioDelivera in the DraperU Ventures portfolio and excited to see what they build next. Congrats, Orikeda, Ikeda, and the BioDelivera team! 🧬 #startups #siliconvalley #draperu #draperualumi

Love seeing the momentum from the Draper University x @Cardano_CF Genesis Pre-Accelerator cohort. Excited to see what the riverArk team builds next on @Cardano!

BEFORE IT WAS OBVIOUS: HOTMAIL. Distribution can be the breakthrough. Hotmail did not originally walk into Draper Fisher Jurvetson as Hotmail. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith initially came in with an idea for a web-building tool. As they were leaving, they mentioned another project almost as an aside: free web-based email for the world. That became the company. But one of the most interesting parts of @TimDraper's story isn’t the product itself. It’s what happened after Hotmail launched. At an early board meeting, the founders asked how they should spread the word. Traditional answers were obvious: advertising, radio, billboards. Tim suggested something much simpler: put a message at the bottom of every email inviting the recipient to get their own free Hotmail account. Every user would become a distribution channel. The idea was controversial enough that the founders initially pushed back. But they eventually tried it, and Hotmail spread around the world. The approach became one of the early examples of what would later be called viral marketing. Microsoft acquired Hotmail in 1997. What looks obvious in retrospect wasn't obvious when the decision was made. Giving away email for free was itself unconventional. Turning every outgoing email into product distribution was even less conventional. Why it matters for builders: sometimes the breakthrough isn't another feature. It’s finding a mechanism where using the product naturally creates the next user. The best distribution loops don't sit on top of the product. They are built into the product itself. #startups #founderstories #siliconvalley #beforeitwasobvious

Draper University × TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 🚀 We’re partnering with TechCrunch for #TechCrunchDisrupt2026, happening October 13-15 in San Francisco. Disrupt brings together 10,000+ founders, investors, and operators from across the startup ecosystem – with 250+ speakers, 200+ sessions, and conversations spanning AI, robotics, infrastructure, fintech, and what’s coming next in technology. For the Draper University community, it’s another chance to get in the room with the people building, funding, and scaling the next generation of companies. As a partner, we’re sharing 40% off all passes with our community. Use code draper40 → spr.ly/6009BGjw5L See you in San Francisco. #TechCrunchDisrupt2026 #Startups #Founders #VentureCapital

Last week, we welcomed 7 Korean startups to Draper University as part of the 2026 Incheon Rise-Up Program 🇰🇷🇺🇸 Together with Draper Startup House Korea, we brought founders building across AI, digital health, B2B SaaS, vision intelligence, and wearable tech to San Mateo to connect with the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The week brought together founders, investors, operators, and the broader Draper community: from networking and curated 1:1 meetings to the Incheon Rise-Up Showcase Day, where all seven companies took the stage to pitch and connect directly with Bay Area investors. For founders entering a new market, the right introductions and conversations can make all the difference. We’re proud to help build a bridge between Korea’s growing startup ecosystem and Silicon Valley. A big thank you to Draper Startup House Korea, Incheon Technopark, and Elpis Labs for making the program possible, and to everyone across the Draper ecosystem who joined us in San Mateo. Congratulations to all seven founders on completing the program! 🚀 A special thank you to @tessalouv, who brought the program together in San Mateo and worked closely with our founders 💙 NURIE AI @Young_nurie / VaultSage · CoBALT / REALIZER AI · QuadBE / MoldWork · Quezar · Speech NRT / NeuroTalk · EDENLUX Corp. / Otus Plus · MellonSpes / TempusLibra

September has been a phenomenal month, filled with opportunity for @RareNetworkWeb3! Incredibly grateful to take part in @draper_u led by @aalicbarker & the chance to pitch in front of @TimDraper & @Andytang. The future of @Envnt_io & @RareEvo becomes stronger day by day! 🦸‍♂️🤝🫡

Peter, thank you for sharing your experience! It’s incredibly valuable for us to hear how the program impacted your journey and the way you approach building. Excited to see where you take it from here! 🔥

Singapore, we’re coming to TOKEN2049. 🇸🇬 Draper University is teaming up with @Cardano_CF and @DraperDragon for UTXO Pitch Night, bringing founders, investors, and the broader UTXO ecosystem together 57 floors above Marina Bay Sands. Founders building across Cardano, Bitcoin, and the wider UTXO ecosystem will pitch live in front of investors, with up to $500K in total funding available to selected teams. And once the pitches are over, we’re taking it to the rooftop: drinks, networking, curated bites, a House DJ, and the Singapore skyline. 📍 LAVO, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore 📅 October 7 💰 Up to $500K in total funding Coming to TOKEN2049? Join us in Singapore. Event registration: luma.com/utxopitchnight

Aaliyah is heading to Hyderabad 🇮🇳 This week, our Program Manager & Investor @aalicbarker is flying to India to join the Draper University India cohort in Hyderabad. She’ll be spending time with founders, mentors, and the local ecosystem, supporting the cohort, meeting the teams, and getting a closer look at what’s being built on the ground. India continues to be one of the most exciting places to watch for entrepreneurship, and we’re looking forward to having Aaliyah there representing Draper University. If you’re in Hyderabad and part of the startup ecosystem, say hi 👋 #DraperUniversity #IndiaStartups #Hyderabad #StartupEcosystem #Founders

Draper University is proud to be a Community Partner of TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026. The world’s largest crypto event returns to Marina Bay Sands on 7-8 October 2026. More than 25,000+ attendees representing 4,000+ companies will gather to build partnerships, exchange ideas and shape what comes next for the global crypto industry. Why attend TOKEN2049 Singapore? 🌏 The industry’s decision-makers, in one place: Meet founders, C-level executives, investors and industry leaders from companies and projects including OKX, a16z Crypto, Binance, Circle, Sui and many more. 🎤 Crypto’s leading voices, live: Hear from 300+ speakers tackling the ideas, technologies and market developments defining the industry’s next chapter. 🗓️ An entire week of crypto: TOKEN2049 anchors TOKEN2049 Week, when 1,000+ side events - from investor breakfasts and private forums to pop-ups and evening meetups - take over Singapore. 🚀 The NEXUS Startup Competition: Discover high-potential crypto startups as emerging founders pitch directly to leading global investors from Dragonfly, Multicoin Capital and Maelstrom on the TOKEN2049 stage. 🧑‍💻 The Origins Hackathon: Top developers will compete in a 36-hour build sprint, creating working products for a share of the prize pool and the opportunity to showcase what they’ve built on the TOKEN2049 stage. As a Community Partner, use our code "DRAPERUNIVERSITY" to get 10% off General Access tickets, or use this ticketing link: tickets.token2049.com/token2…

Two DraperU portfolio companies. One mission to orbit 🚀 ORBES has signed a Letter of Intent with Symphony Space for its first commercial space mission, marking an exciting milestone for both companies. ORBES is building robotic spacecraft for in-orbit inspection and maintenance. Its newly unveiled Exo-ORB is designed to launch alongside customer infrastructure and stay nearby in orbit, ready to inspect, and eventually repair, spacecraft without requiring a separate servicing mission. The first commercial Exo-ORB is planned to fly aboard Symphony Space’s Adagio platform on its demo mission in late 2027 or early 2028. This is exactly the kind of progress we love to see across the Draper ecosystem: ambitious founders building the infrastructure for what comes next, and, even better, building it together. Congrats to the ORBES and Symphony Space teams on the milestone. 🛰️ More details via Payload Space -> payloadspace.com/orbes-unvei…

BEFORE IT WAS OBVIOUS: SKYPE. Back the people, not the pitch. The company Tim Draper first agreed to invest in was not Skype as we know it. Tim learned that the founders behind Kazaa were working on another company using the same peer-to-peer file-sharing technology for a completely different purpose. He traveled to London, met Niklas Zennström, heard the plan for a shared Wi-Fi business called Skyper, and decided to back it. Then, about a week later, the plan changed. The founders told him they were abandoning Wi-Fi and going after long-distance phone calls instead. Rather than walking away because the company no longer matched the original pitch, Draper stayed in. That decision became Skype. At the time, making high-quality calls over the internet was hardly the default assumption. Traditional telecom infrastructure owned communications, bandwidth was still constrained, and internet calling was far from the ubiquitous behavior it later became. But the founders saw that the same underlying peer-to-peer architecture they had built for Kazaa could be applied to communication. Skype was eventually sold to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, and later to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. Why it matters for builders: the deal you pitch is rarely the company you end up building. Markets move, products change, and founders discover things after the fundraising deck has already been written. What matters is whether the people can recognize new information and move decisively when they see a better opportunity. Sometimes the most important thing an investor can back isn't the plan on the page. It’s the founders’ ability to rewrite it.

Today, we honor the life and legacy of Bill Draper. He was one of the pioneers who helped shape venture capital as we know it. Long before Silicon Valley became synonymous with startups and venture capital, Bill was already backing people building the future. He began his venture career in 1959, and went on to co-found Draper & Johnson Investment Company and later Sutter Hill Ventures, one of the earliest venture firms in Silicon Valley. Over the following decades, he helped finance hundreds of technology companies and entrepreneurs. Among the early companies backed during his years at Sutter Hill were LSI Logic, Apollo Computer, Measurex, Qume, Activision, and Hybritech. Years later, Bill became one of the earliest investors in Skype. This bet reportedly returned roughly 1,000x. And his influence went far beyond individual investments. The firm he built, Sutter Hill Ventures, would go on to become an original investor in NVIDIA in 1993, alongside Sequoia Capital. When it was decades before GPUs became the infrastructure powering the AI revolution. Bill also took venture capital global. He launched Draper International, one of the first U.S. venture funds focused on India, helping bring the Silicon Valley model to a new generation of entrepreneurs. Then he applied the same belief in people to public service and philanthropy, serving as Chairman and President of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, leading the United Nations Development Programme, and later co-founding what became the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, bringing venture-style support to social entrepreneurs around the world. But perhaps his greatest legacy cannot be measured in exits or returns. It lives in generations. Bill learned venture capital from his father, General William H. Draper Jr., one of the earliest venture capitalists on the West Coast. He passed that entrepreneurial spirit to his son, Tim Draper, and today the Draper family continues backing founders across multiple generations. The tends, the technologies, the market opportunities changed throughout the years. Bill’s fundamental belief did not: back extraordinary people with the courage to build what does not exist yet. Bill Draper helped establish that philosophy in Silicon Valley. We are proud to carry it forward. Thank you, Bill, for helping build the industry, and the legacy that made so much innovation possible.

Our Program Manager & Investor Aaliyah Barker is speaking at the Virtual 1:1 VC Pitch Conf on September 17. She’ll join speakers from Union Square Ventures and OpenVC for a conversation on How founders should pitch family offices vs. VC funds vs. accelerators. It’s a topic we care about deeply at DraperU: understanding who you’re pitching, what they’re optimizing for, and how to position your company accordingly. The conference is free to attend and brings together 20+ speakers and 4,000+ participants. Founders raising in the next 6 months can also pitch their startup 1:1 to 20 matched investors, with 300+ VCs, angels, and family offices confirmed for the pitching sessions. Join Aaliyah on September 17: vcconf.com?186 Use code DRAPERU10 for 10% off a Startup Pitch Ticket.

My first We The Builders conversation with @evanburns, CEO of @StateAffairsUS. I think Evan is building one of the most interesting companies at the intersection of politics and capitalism, with the ambitious goal of creating the category of “policy markets” which he says is more important than financial markets. In this conversation we discuss the state of media, the thesis and business of State Affairs and more. Available wherever you get your podcasts. @rabois was one of the first believers in the idea and they just came out of stealth with a $70m seed round funded by @khoslaventures and @foundersfund. To understand how Evan got here, perhaps sharing some of his background is important. He started a media company called Odyssey which he ran for eight years before eventually exiting and went on to start a beverage company called The Long Drink that was wildly successful in a short period of time doing millions in sales. Through that he learnt how important it was for companies to understand policy in real time and have relationships with policymakers. One of the best things about doing the show is meeting people that lay low and are underrated in the mainstream discourse. I think Evan is one of those people who is going to build a generational company and will be household name in the next five years or so. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 01:59 - Finding Business Alpha Outside Major Media Hubs 03:25 - The Origins of the Finnish Long Drink 10:44 - Launching a Drink in the US and Lessons in Policy Navigation 18:33 - Reclaiming Truth and Objectivity in Modern News Media 21:27 - The Stagnation and Future of Education Policy 24:44 - Unpacking the Negative Incentive Structures in Politics 26:59 - What Are Policy Markets? The Core Thesis of State Affairs 30:50 - Building a Real-Time Knowledge Graph for Western Democracy 33:01 - Business Model 37:32 - Practical AI and Data Use Cases for Public Servants and Corporations 41:49 - The Strategic Impact of Events Like the Hill & Valley Forum 45:13 - Moats of a Monopoly Business 47:43 - Why Objective Journalism Is Mathematically More Valuable Than Ever 55:29 - Why Startups Must Win America Before Going International 58:05 - Building Deeper Ontologies and Flywheels Over Time 01:02:22 - Using AI Models to Settle a Moon Landing Debate 01:07:05 - Evan’s Take on MBAs in the Startup Ecosystem 01:08:24 - Overcoming Early VC Skepticism 01:10:51 - Closing

Big love to @draper_u @OrionFund for bringing together multi-chain web3 and AI culture together. @RareEvo x @TechRebelWorld x @Web3Better

Two teams from the Draper University x Cardano Foundation Genesis Pre-Accelerator won a hackathon at GitHub HQ last week 🏆 Agentic Dynamics and @ChatterPay, congrats to both teams. @morganschofield @tomasdm_eth @MartinPefaur keep it up!