Hi, I'm Tim Draper and I'm here to be interviewed by Sachin on Oak D. This incredible podcast. Really looking forward to it.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the O truck show. We're Silicon Valley's first business, tech, and self-improvement podcast for teens, hosted by a team, me. My name is Sachin Sel. I'm a 19-year-old award-winning entrepreneur, podcaster, author, and student from the Bay Area. And I interview remarkable and influential entrepreneurs, executives, investors, leaders, and inspiring individuals from all walks of life. So, we can learn from their stories and level up ourselves. And then I'm also the co-founder and CMO of three doshas.com. This is a coaching startup I started with my family which is based on helping people level up in their careers through ancient science from India. And by the way, the purpose of this podcast is to inspire you to go for it, which is what the Punjabi word means. Today, our very special guest and returning guest actually is Tim Draper, legendary billionaire venture capitalist and founder of Draper Associates, Draper University and DFJ. He's also the creator and host of the hit reality TV pitch Meet the Drapers, which I love watching. You guys should check that out. In addition, he was an early investor in companies such as SpaceX, Tesla, Coinbase, Robinhood, Twitch, VU, Ring, Skype, Hotmail, DocuSign, Ancestry.com, and many more. He is also a huge Bitcoin and crypto proponent. You can tell from the tie right there. And he actually invested in Bitcoin in 2014. He invested in SpaceX in 2009. And then he invested in Tesla in 2006, which is the year I was born. Ah, see. Isn't that crazy?
Terrific. Well, yeah. So, 19 years. Wait, I thought we had been in SpaceX for 21 years.
Maybe it's the internet's wrong.
So, you were in SpaceX longer than I've been alive.
But I want to know what the old ancient Indian program is.
Yeah. I know you're friends with group hungry.
Oh, yeah? That improves your performance. So what is that? How does it work?
Absolutely.
So this is a podcast. This company is called three doshas. We work with companies across Silicon Valley. We work with Palo Alto Networks, Intel, Google. We go to universities. And essentially what we teach people is there's three greater energies in your life: air, fire, and water. In Sanskrit, it's vata, pitta, kapha. And the whole concept is it's like a personality-based system where you figure out your strengths. So some people might be air, some water, some fire. It sounds silly to...
So, I'm really strong in water.
Big swimmer? I interviewed 52 entrepreneurs in an ice bath below 40 degrees for 52 minutes. I was in 52 minutes, they were each in about five minutes. I just did it. Anyway, I'm a water dad. So I'm very clearly a water dad. And yeah, I did spend some time with Shri Shri Ravi Shankar. He's fantastic. Actually, his name is Gurudev.
Shri Shri Ravi Shankar Draper. Oh, because he was a guest judge twice on Meet the Drapers and we had so much fun. That's awesome.
And I spoke at his graduation from Draper University in Orissa, and he spoke at my annual meeting. We've really gotten to be very good friends.
That's awesome. Well, hey, maybe I'll send my pitch deck over. We can invest in Three Doshas or actually we could speak for Draper University. Let me know. Bring us in.
Well, three doshas will have to be, I mean, in order for Draper Associates to invest, it has to be in an industry that is warping. It has to change the way an industry works with new technology, going after an industry that provides bad service at high cost. So the coaching industry, you're adding new technology to it. In general, people are pretty happy with their coaches, but if you can make it at much lower cost, then maybe you've got an opportunity. But otherwise, it doesn't fit our model. Our model is to take an industry providing bad service at high cost, go in with new technology and transform it. Or the other alternative is are you creating something that's never been created before? That's another way we might look at you as an investment opportunity.
Well, I have a million thoughts in my head right now, but I will definitely get back to that. Um, all right. We got to talk about it. Everyone's talking about it. SpaceX IPO, literally the largest IPO in history, made Elon Musk a trillionaire. You were an early investor. The question I have...
We were his first investor. Actually, Elon was the first investor. He put $30 million in before we got involved. And then I had a great experience where I was giving Steve Jurvetson a hard time. I said, 'You spend all your nights and weekends launching rockets. Go find us the best rocket company.' He thought I was joking. I said, 'Really?' He comes back and says, 'The best rocket company is Elon's.' I said, 'Elon? Isn't he supposed to be running Tesla?' And then we started talking with Elon and we realized he is 150 to 180 percent committed to getting humanity to be multiplanetary. The other mission was he liked Tesla because it was making this planet more livable. But when he talked to us, it was clear his real passion was for SpaceX. Tesla was something he ran and did a beautiful job of. He just pulled things out of a hat. He raised $400 million from the US government and then he bought the NUMI plant from a joint venture between GM and Toyota, got it for five cents on the dollar, and turned it into the Tesla plant. I actually had the fifth one off the line, although there were two sold before that. And I got the fifth S car off the line. It was one of the greatest experiences. We brought the students from Draper University to the launch of the Tesla S. I remember very distinctly Elon was just exhausted. He was about to launch, the governor was coming. One of my students asked, 'What would you recommend for an art entrepreneur, startup entrepreneur?' He looks at her, exhausted, sweating, says, 'Don't do it.' And that was perfect because if you're going to do it anyway, do it. But if you're on the fence, you should not be an entrepreneur. So it's a thing of beauty. We had a wonderful time with him, got to test drive the thing. And then SpaceX, I remember going down to visit and they had this amazing technology. You could do this to a clay model of the car and it would have a strip down the side. You could make a programming change and all the robots would change the look of the car. He put servers or modules and engines inside my vehicle that weren't even turned on for 10 years. That car was so forward-thinking. Then I got the SpaceX tour. The biggest technology there, other than the re-entry and the chopsticks, was the reuse of the module. Getting the module to return requires a ceramic with a certain off-center shape that allows re-entry without burning up. The number of innovations around SpaceX have been extraordinary. I have fiber to the home, but my Starlink is faster and better. So SpaceX has been a fantastic investment and hold for 21 years. Now it's recognized by the public. I think the SEC should make it easier for companies to go public so anyone can buy into private companies, not just millionaires and institutions. It would be good for the economy. But it would have been great to allow individuals to participate in SpaceX way back then.
I agree. But now they can. And hey, it's the final frontier. The sky's the limit, as they say. But it's just gonna keep...
