Hello everyone and welcome to our second annual investment crowdfunding week. It's a privilege and an honor to get to host this event for our community of investors, members, partners, and of course, new faces alike that are just learning about our industry. Over 8 years ago, I started KingsCrowd with the idea that we could build a Bloomberg-like solution built for investors to navigate the investment crowdfunding markets. But never did I think that KingsCrowd could become the central voice of the movement to reinvent how the private capital markets work. Yes, we collect data on 100% of the crowdfunding markets and have likely built the largest database of private company financials ever assembled. But for me, what is so exceptional about what we do is that we get to meet fervent investors, passionate builders, and incredible ambassadors who love the space as much as we do. Together, we are building something that our kids and grandkids will benefit from because together we are building access to one of the most powerful asset classes on Earth. Backing founders building the next generation of great companies. The next three days is all about bringing to life KingsCrowd's data by highlighting 20 of the best founders actively raising capital in the investment crowdfunding markets that you all can back. If you're a founder, you will hear from some of the best partners across legal, marketing, capital raising, accounting, and more. All found through our work in the industry via our advisory arm. We've brought together the best and brightest to provide an action-packed 3 days of education and content that we hope will help you find your next investment or take that next step towards your own crowdfund. So, to kick it off, we have none other than the legendary Tim Draper. He, his father, and his adult children have made venture capital the family business. And in doing so, they have helped to shape how the private markets work in the United States. Whether through Draper Associates, which Tim founded, his Draper University of Heroes, or even his TV show, Meet the Drapers, built to highlight founders raising via crowdfunding back in the day, and now has founders raising capital as well. Tim has always been at the cutting edge of the reinvention of the private capital markets and he has had his fair share of investment success including the likes of Coinbase, Tesla, Robinhood, Twitch TV, SpaceX and many, many more. And yes, of course, many of you probably know him from his Bitcoin tie and passion for crypto. Which is why we are so excited to have Tim here today to share his insights on topics such as venture investing, why he believes in the investment crowdfunding market so much, where he sees the market heading, what he's investing in today, and answer your questions live. I couldn't think of a better way to kick off Investment Crowdfunding Week. So, with that, let's welcome Tim to the show. Tim, thank you so much for being here.
Great. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Chris. This is great fun. I love what you're doing and KingsCrowd is a very exciting and forward-thinking organization and hopefully will bring crowdfunding further to light where everyone, not just the millionaires, can rise and fall with the markets.
I couldn't agree more. Well, thank you for those kind words. Tim, for those who don't know you as well, can you give us just a little bit of background on your history, your family's history in the venture space and what it is that you love so much about the venture ecosystem?
Yeah, but before I get into that, I have just come off of a filming of a Meet the Drapers episode in Hawaii where they said, "Hey, we're going to take you for a hike up to the waterfalls." And I climbed way up to this pool at the bottom of a waterfall and I sat in the pool and I said, "Hey, anybody want to come pitch me?" And they came up. I mean, and two people actually did come up and pitch me. And there is a viral video going around right now about it and we're both getting drenched by the waterfall and he's pitching me the whole time. Very serious. I'm asking questions. He gives me the whole pitch. But I got a little bit of waterfall revenge. And so if you hear my stomach growl during the middle of this, it's because of some of that water must have made it into my stomach. Anyway, totally worth it for the show. And so anyway, that's something to think about. But me, you asked about me. I'm a venture capitalist. I grew up in the business. My grandfather was the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist. My dad was a pioneer in venture capital. I have three of my four children are venture capitalists. Now my son Adam works at Boost, which is a sci-fi to reality venture capitalist going deep tech. And my daughter Jesse is sort of a force for good and focusing on any entrepreneurs that have females in the founding team. And my son Billy is with Path Ventures and he is focused on simplicity but it's really kind of fun to see and we share deals all the way through the family and we just love the business and why I was so passionate about crowdfunding was that I used to have this great job and I still do and I get to meet all these really interesting people and they're creating new businesses and they're doing something really great for the world but my friends weren't able to do it because they weren't either millionaires or it's all that 3340 Act stuff that should be sunseted by now but it's there. And so I always felt like the individual investor should be able to participate in private companies and we even started Meet the Drapers as a crowdfunding show and got a little trouble from the SEC and so we decided to I would just give away the or I would just make the investment myself rather than having the crowd be able to participate. So now in the show Meet the Drapers the viewer can vote and they can participate. Sometimes we do it with a game, sometimes we do it with Polymarket. Sometimes we do something with Pump.fun and so we've tried a lot of interesting things with a crowdfund. But anyway, yeah, I've been in the venture business for over 40 years. We've had great success and it's kept me in the business and we were fortunate enough to have written the first check to SpaceX and Tesla and I bought a whole bunch of Bitcoin when it was on the market. Actually, I bought a bunch of Bitcoin at $4, but I lost it all to a series of strange things that happened. Mt. Gox and some group that front-ran us with a chip. They were supposed to mine it for us, but they used the chip for themselves first and then price went up. So it was a little bit of the wild west, but I did buy a bunch from the US Marshal's office back in 2013, 2014. And so, yes, I've been a big Bitcoin believer. Got it right here. Bitcoin tie. And that's been defining for me. We were defined mostly by being the first venture investors to back any internet companies. Then we were the first ones to back anybody in China. Then the first ones to back anybody in Eastern Europe with Skype. And then first ones to buy I was the first one to buy any Bitcoin and we like doing that. We like being first. So the career has been one where I had a mission in life and that was to spread entrepreneurship and venture capital around the world. And when I started it was really just the Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Boston. And now I think we've done it because I see venture capital wherever I go. Deep Africa or South India or wherever you see it.
Yeah. No, 100%. Well, you've certainly made a lot of incredible investments and your family at large has done so. I know people always say, "Oh, it's the founder. It's the founder. It's the founder." But, you know, you've made a ton of investments and some of them have been massive wins and I'm sure many of them have been losses, too. When you think about like the thing that stands out to you about all the wins that you've had, what's the thing that comes to mind where you're like that's the defining characteristic where you just kind of know?
Well, I think they were all run by a determined founder. I think the founder was so sure that they were going to be successful or so sure that this was really important for the world that they were never going to let go. And because founders go through a lot. They go through ups and downs and trouble. All sorts of things happen to them. Suddenly they have to restart or they have to pivot or they have to do various things and the true entrepreneurs don't leave the sinking ship. They start bailing. They build that business no matter what it takes. And I think that's what I'm trying to look for. I'm trying to look for along with really big markets and great technologies and good interesting business models or whatever. I'm looking for founders that have that quiet confidence or that total determination that they're never going to let go of this. They're going to be like a dog with a bone for the rest of their life. And you know a lot of people say oh it's really good to go with a founder for a while and then you get professional management. I have not found that to be the successful model. I have found that the successful model is to back the founder, back the founder, back the founder, keep the founder going, keep them motivated, excited about what they're doing. Or maybe find a founder who doesn't need to be encouraged to do that. They do it even better.
No, I love to hear that. I mean, I remember three, four years ago, we hit one of the hardest points in our journey over the last eight years. And I remember sitting there going like, if this were to end tomorrow, what would I do? And I was like, oh, I would just do this again. I'm like, all right, well then this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my career. And when people say, oh, you know, are you going to make it? Are you? I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. As far as I'm concerned, this is the next 20 years. Like I'm going nowhere. Try and stop me now.
And you know, I've been at it for over 40 years. So if it looks like we're a success now, then it's been 40 years to an overnight success. But in my mind, I've still got a long way to go.
Well, you have an energy about you, Tim, that I think is hard to find. And when you find it, those are the types of people to your point, it's endless, boundless energy of I'm just going to keep going. I'm not stopping. And part of it is just because you love it, which you know is a special thing.
Or you feel this mission like you have to do it. Like how to do this.
Yeah, that's 100% right. So, one of the things that I find interesting and as part of my admission of like I have to do this, I'm never going to give up is so many of your colleagues in the venture industry have either poo-pooed this industry, continue to want to kind of look away and say, "Oh, that's not the real deals." And it's been proven time and again, crowdfunding. That's right. Crowdfunding, right? What do you think it is? Is it just because it's the new thing and they're scared of it? But how do we get more of them on board? I mean, honestly, half of deals now are venture-backed anyway, so it's changing, but I still hear those comments, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
Well, you my I have had three in effect false starts. As I've done different things for crowdfunding, I started or I joined up with this group called MEVC and we did trade for Fisher Jervitz and MVC Ventures and we were very excited about it. We were going to take the crowd's money, we're going to invest it alongside our money. And so we raised this money from the public and we were ready to go and the lawyers all came to me and said, "Well, you can't invest in anything that you've already invested in." And I thought, well, that was the whole point. You can't invest in anything that they created a catch-22. Can't invest in anything that you're investing in with your private company, private fund because so you can't have a private fund and a public fund because if you treat one differently from the other the public fund will say you treated the private fund too well against us. And then they basically said you guys can't invest the money. So we had to hire out a team to go do it. And then eventually it got bought. You know the stock market didn't understand and it crashed because we were gone and then some hedge fund guys picked it up. Okay, so that was step one in crowdfunding. Step two was that we tried to create a private market. It was called Xchange and then we had to change the name to Expert Financial because the SEC told us we couldn't be an exchange. Couldn't sound like exchange. And we were trying to create a private market and what would happen is we'd find an entrepreneur who wanted to raise money on the private market. They'd be all excited about it, make it so that it was tradable and all that stuff and then they'd bring it to their board and their board would say no. And then we did this with Meet the Drapers, our show, our TV show, and we created a crowdfunding program, and it was really taking off. It was almost every entrepreneur that got on our show was getting fully funded to their million-dollar limit. And we were about to bump it up to five million because of the changes in the rules. And that was when the SEC came knocking on our door and I said, "I don't want to. Okay, whatever. You guys, I don't want to have anything to do with this." So I just put up the money myself. So, three strikes and I'm out. But I still love it because I want everybody to be able to participate in this early venture business, this business of participating in private markets. And I have never felt that it was fair that I was able to because I was a millionaire or that I had five years of investment experience or whatever it is that is required and it didn't seem right. So I feel like it should allow it should be people should be able to do this because then it decentralizes the control of capital and capital is then put to work more efficiently. And I think we're so stuck in tradition. We're so stuck in the past. We're stuck with this 33 and 40 Act. And they're keeping the poor poor and the rich rich. And if they really I mean if they really believe that we want this to be America where people can rise from the ashes they really should allow that, you know, 22-year-old to start putting his money into some guy that he has a lot of faith in. There's something very wrong. You know, they did it way back when, you know, it was the midst of the depression and they were right the widows and orphans. They talked about widows and orphans. Well, widows, you know, I can understand wanting to protect your money if you're old, but orphans, I mean, it's like, hey, they got to have a shot. Give them a chance. Give them that first rung of the ladder. So anyway, I've ranted long enough.
