Wow, that is fantastic. That is extraordinary. Way to go, Elon. We backed him.
How would you describe that company? It's so many things.
How would I describe SpaceX? I think SpaceX is the company that is going to take us to Mars and all of the things that come along with it. When Kennedy said, 'We're going to the moon.'
We choose to go to the moon not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
We were first other than Elon. Elon put the first 30 million of his own money in. My partner Steve spent most of his nights and weekends launching rockets. He was just so obsessed. And I said, 'Look, you're so obsessed with rockets. Find us the best rocket company.' And he came back about 3 weeks later. He said, 'The best rocket company is Elons. He needed it.' And the first couple of rockets after the investment blew up on the launch pad and we thought, 'Oh boy, that money went away pretty fast.'
Today's guest is the legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper. He was an early investor in companies like Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Coinbase, Robinhood, Twitch, and many, many more. These are companies that went on to reshape how the world communicates, moves, and thinks about money. The Drapers are also one of the most legendary families in Silicon Valley history. His grandfather helped build modern VC before Silicon Valley became what we know today. His father founded Sutter Hill Ventures and helped shape the culture of Sand Hill Road, earning the reputation of the godfather of Silicon Valley venture capital. And today, the Drapers have become a four-generation venture capital family. Tim, it's such an honor to have you on the show. I've been a big fan.
Terrific. Well, it's been fun to be on your show and happy to do it again.
Oh, already? Well, I love that. I love that. You know, I remember seeing you at the Mar-a-Lago Trump event and there was a wall of people around you and I was there thinking there's probably like a 98% chance that you do not want another random person speaking to you right now. But I did it anyway because if there was like this 2% chance I had to take it and here we are today.
Terrific. Well, I do like people and that helps because I do get a lot of interest. Much of it is because I'm a venture capitalist and well known and I do early stage investing and a lot of people have interesting ideas they want to run across me or real business plans where they want to make those things happen. So I appreciate them. They come from all over. I see my eyebrows once again out of control.
You have the most iconic eyebrows.
So I find it good to go out and see people because I learn a lot from a lot of different people. And I learn about what the future might hold. Mostly because people like to come to me and talk about the future and what it's going to look like. And that was a great event, that Mar-a-Lago event on Bitcoin. I thought it was a great event. Very well put together and really some extraordinary people. I met Mike Tyson.
Who's a great philosopher.
Some people think boxer or an actor.
Yeah, I really enjoyed a lot of the speeches. I enjoyed the interactions I had. And it's such a beautiful location.
I would imagine you walk around with a bunch of security and you're like, 'Don't talk to me.' But you were so open to everybody approaching you.
There was a lot of security going in. Yeah.
President Trump was going to be there.
He was protecting himself from me.
You talk about people pitching you the future and now Wall Street and literally everybody is talking about SpaceX. You backed them very early on.
Oh, you were first? We were first. Other than Elon. Elon put the first 30 million of his own money in.
What was the story like? What was the first encounter?
Well, it's really credit to Steve Jervson, my partner at the time. Steve spent most of his nights and weekends launching rockets. He was just so obsessed. And I said, 'Look, you're so obsessed with rockets. Find us the best rocket company.' And he came back about three weeks later, maybe a couple months later, and he said, 'The best rocket company is Elons.' And I said, 'Isn't he supposed to be running Tesla?' Because we had a big investment in Tesla. And he said, 'Yeah, but I think we should hear him out.' So when we talked to Elon, we got this amazing feeling from him that his mission in life was really to make us multiplanetary and there was so much passion tied to getting us to Mars or whatever else he wanted to do that I realized that that was what he was really put on the earth for and Tesla was sort of a means to an end. And well, he also wanted to save our planet here, but he also wanted us to get off this planet potentially. And yeah, so we backed him and that was an amazing decision. I'm thrilled we did and we put a lot of money into it too because hey, he needed it. And the first couple of rockets after the investment blew up on the launch pad and we thought, 'Oh boy, that money went away pretty fast.' But then one of the Falcon Ones lifted off and worked and suddenly there were plenty of contracts and he was off to the races. So way to go, Elon. And he has that great way of saying, 'Hey, we're going to Mars.' And when you get a big mission like that, you attract the best entrepreneurs in the world. You attract the best engineers and scientists and everybody wants to come join you because they want to go to Mars or they want to think about that problem. That's a much better problem than another SaaS product or whatever. So Elon really attracted some of the best talent and that talent has come up with some amazing things. Starlink. We have fiber to the home here and my Starlink works better than my fiber to the home. Wow, what an amazing company. And on your way to Mars, you're going to find so many other things. I don't know if space is the final frontier, but it's the frontier of the now.
So, in the SpaceX IPO mission statement, he actually talked about building this civilization beyond Earth like you said, but there is this really real hot debate on the internet. It says once the company becomes public, ordinary people who might not have that vision have to buy in through ETFs and stuff. Do you think the public or everyday people are ready for such a big mission?
Well, I don't know if they're ready to go to Mars, but I certainly have plans myself to eventually go to the moon. I think they have great imaginations. I think a lot of people are a little scared. They live in a scared world. They don't want to see change because they've got a system working. They have a job and they get food and shelter and clothing and occasionally they get to go out to the movies or whatever. They kind of like this. So if somebody comes and shakes them up and says, 'Hey, we're going to Mars,' it's one of two reactions. One is, 'I don't want to go to Mars. I don't want anybody to go to Mars. I don't think anyone should.' That's one. And the other one is, 'Wow, that is fantastic. That is extraordinary. I can't wait to see what happens here.' And people who buy shares of public stocks are going to look and say, 'I want a piece of that. I want a piece of that future, whatever that is.'
So, how would you describe that company now? It's so many things.
How would I describe SpaceX? I think SpaceX is the company that is going to take us to Mars and all of the things that come along with it. It's a little like when Kennedy said, 'We're going to the moon.' But I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his reach around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard. And all sorts of new technologies came from that. The transistor came from that. Some amazing things came from people solving a big problem like that. So you create a goal like, 'Hey, we've got to all be able to live on Mars.' How are we going to do that? Then you start thinking about how do you do it. You terraform it before you get there? How can you get there faster than six months? So people start thinking in really extraordinary ways. So I actually think SpaceX is the company that's going to take us to Mars, but along the way it's going to have things like Starlink and I guess also Twitter is now a part of it and X and X.AI. Actually, I use all the AI products and X.AI is the one I go to for the truth.
