Tim Draper

Founder of Draper Associates, Draper Associates

😍 HelloWoofy.com Pitches Billionaires Tim Draper / Naveen Jain on Meet the Drapers (Semi Finals!) 🚀

🎥 Jul 22, 2020 📺 HelloWoofy ⏱ 18m 👁 148 views

About Tim Draper

Tim Draper, founder of Draper Associates, has been active in media appearances and events, discussing his investment philosophy and his views on Bitcoin, SpaceX, and entrepreneurship. In interviews, Draper described himself as an early investor in SpaceX, stating that the company is "going to take us to Mars." He has reiterated his prediction that Bitcoin will reach $250,000, arguing that it is "better, faster, cheaper than the dollar" and will "eclipse fiat currencies." Draper has advised families to hold six months' worth of Bitcoin, businesses to hold two to four weeks of payroll in Bitcoin, and governments to hold Bitcoin as a hedge against hyperinflation. He has also stated that "if you're a fiduciary... and you don't own Bitcoin, you're being irresponsible." Draper has also commented on the broader investment landscape, stating that "every 20 years, seven out of the 10 biggest companies in the world turn over." He has discussed his criteria for identifying entrepreneurs, saying he looks for founders who are "challenging the status quo" and have a "burning desire" that makes them proceed regardless of criticism. Draper has also promoted Draper University, describing it as a "human accelerator" that turns "ordinary people into heroic entrepreneurs." He has criticized what he called "socialist countries," stating they have "weak leaders" and "flatline" economies, while arguing that "free countries and the capitalist countries grow at extraordinary rates."

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Tim Draper's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (68 segments)

✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution

Tim Draper0:00

Hello and welcome to season three of Meet the Drapers Brand Accelerator. Every week, three entrepreneurs pitch their startups to the Drapers and a VIP guest judge. Every episode, the judges declare a winner to move on to the semifinals. And the winner is... But here's the twist: you, the viewer, can invest in any and all of these startups like a company. Go to meetthedrapers.com and invest in their live crowdfunding campaign, and you can bring them back for the season finale. The crowd is voting in three of our finalists. This is your shot to invest like a venture capitalist. Now let's make some money. Welcome to Meet the Drapers. I'm Tim Draper, I'm a venture capitalist, and also helped start Draper University. To my right is my father Bill Draper, a pioneering venture capitalist who then created venture philanthropy with the Arcade Foundation. And to my left is Polly Draper, famous actress, also a director, producer and writer of many really interesting movies and TV shows. And we have two, count them, two guest judges today: Astra Needham and Juan Acosta. They run Draper University. They're going to tell you all about what it's like to accelerate entrepreneurs, to accelerate people and drive them to do extraordinary things.

Azra, Juan, thanks for coming on to the show.

Guest Judge1:29

Thank you for having us. Great, exciting.

Tim Draper1:30

So tell us about Draper University and what you've done and how it's going.

Guest Judge1:36

So what we do at Draper University is a five-week entrepreneurship program. That program not only helps them accelerate who they are as people and turn these ordinary amazing humans into superheroes, but also gives them access, which is one of the biggest things that you need as a startup. It gives them access to some of the brightest minds and some of the best capital that they can access in Silicon Valley.

Tim Draper2:00

Terrific. And Juan, you run the product, tell us about that.

Guest Judge2:04

It's a fantastic program, Tim. You were the one that created the vision for it. And Azra said it right: we turn humans into heroes, that's what we're all about. So we ignite people, we accelerate ideas, and we do that by igniting the entrepreneurial spirit. And one really interesting thing that we do is we invest in some of these awesome people. What's great about that is that we get to live with them for five weeks. Unlike any other venture firm or venture ecosystem out there, we really get to know the entrepreneurs.

Tim Draper2:34

So let me get a few of the numbers straight. About 1,200 students?

Guest Judge2:38

Yes, they've come from 78, 81 different countries. 81 different countries. They've started 350 companies...

Tim Draper2:45

362?

Guest Judge2:47

362 companies. They've raised over 220 million in venture funding altogether.

Tim Draper2:57

Wow. And give us a few examples of some of the highlights.

Guest Judge3:01

Yeah, sure. So we've got from all across industries: we have Quantum, which is one of the largest blockchain projects in the world that actually started at Draper University. We have a company called Pretty Litter, so they actually make cat litter and they're doing extremely well. So you have something from the blockchain space all the way to cat litter, we've got it all. And the story I love is that Sarbi Sarna, who created a fiber line that could go up the fallopian tube and detect whether you had cancer, and that had never been done before. She got very quick FDA approval and sold her business for 275 million dollars, and now she's on our board. We see that whole cycle from the very first class through their entire journey, and we're really proud to be part of that journey.

Tim Draper3:52

Terrific. Well, so of our three semi-finalists, one of the three actually came from Draper University, and you'll have to figure out who that is. So we're going to dig deep now and really figure out which of these go on to the finals. And we're quite excited about what we're about to see. So let's bring out these entrepreneurs and we'll give them the third degree.

Arjun4:20

Hi everyone, my name is Arjun, like Argentina without the 'tina'. I'm the founder and CEO of HelloWoofie, a data science driven marketing platform designed for small businesses and medium-sized companies.

Tim Draper4:31

You know, up until he finally gave the word that we won, it was so nerve-wracking. [Laughter] It's Woofie, congratulations, you're the big winner! And now that we have two new judges on board, I think I'm going to be making a shorter pitch to get them on board and get them up to speed. But it's all about making sure that our mission is conveyed across, that we are for the entrepreneur and we want to help everyone around the world. That's something I'm going to very much focus on, and then also address the market: how much have we raised, what are we looking to raise, things like that.

Now let's bring in our third contestant of this semi-final round. Arjun Ray of Woofie, we're going to give you the real hard grind now. Give these three a brief rundown of what Woofie does, and then we'll dig in with some questions.

Arjun5:26

Absolutely. Woofie is a data science marketing platform designed for small businesses and medium-sized companies to finally take back the grunt work and the time suck that goes into coming up with the right copy, figuring out the right emojis, the right hashtags, and the images that will do really well based on data science. With 35 million data points on the backend and over 3000 emojis, that's a lot of information to go through, we do it in milliseconds when the small business owner or creative marketer is looking for the optimum post.

Tim Draper5:56

Why is it that you feel you're the one who should go on to the finals?

Arjun6:02

It's a great question, Tim. Movements are based on hope, and that's been the theme of my life in the last 10 to 12 months. From finding a full-time job to make sure that my team could afford to continue on the project, and we shipped just a couple of weeks ago. We have traction, we have paying customers, and we have distribution partners as well lined up.

Tim Draper6:20

Do you have sales in that short time?

Arjun6:22

So just about five weeks, we made about two to three thousand dollars, and we have about 30 customers and about five to ten percent retention. My first business when I was like 19 was doing this for businesses, for small businesses. So it's the goal to try to take people like the business that I have out of the equation and give this to the power of small businesses.

Tim Draper6:43

Or are you integrating that with the digital agencies that already do this?

Arjun6:50

We don't want to replace anyone. It's the Iron Man suit, it's the augmented version of a marketer. So if you do X amount of work, this allows you to do a hundred times more and be more efficient.

Tim Draper7:01

How is it different from what Google or other platforms already do?

Arjun7:05

Google is a search engine and that allows you to find the information from all over the world, but what it doesn't allow you to do is come up with the right copy. And most importantly, it's not data science driven.

Tim Draper7:16

I'm talking about Google Ads, which is what the campaigns are. Google Ads they have nothing but data science driven.

Arjun7:25

We're not in paid marketing, we're focusing on organic posting at the moment. But our customers are exactly asking for us to do exactly what you're saying is paid marketing after the fact. But currently we're focusing on organic posting when it comes to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Those are the kinds of efforts that we're making. We're currently focused on that.

Tim Draper7:46

So why can't Hootsuite or somebody else do this? They already have the customers and the data.

Arjun7:53

Hootsuite is too big to really get out of its own way. But if you take a look at a company like Salesforce that is even bigger, they're really happy with the kinds of revenue that they're making and the kinds of technologies that they have in the pipeline. For us, we moved really fast in 10 months. It's not something that they would focus on at the moment, but if it catches on, then we could have a strategic conversation with them.

Tim Draper8:16

Or they will bury you.

Bill Draper8:20

How are you going to get the word out? How do you do your marketing?

Arjun8:25

Yeah, it's a great question. Facebook groups have been our focus for the most part. We've identified in all the groups that we've been a part of over a hundred thousand potential users, and even a small percentage of that would mean a lot. We have a strategic partnership coming up in the next couple of weeks that will allow us to be in front of 850,000 potential B2B customers.

Bill Draper8:44

Are you using your own platform to find people organically?

Arjun8:47

We're using our own platform to schedule for sure, but like, you know, finding people because if you post that good, people should be finding you from your organic presence. It's a great tool to find the right emojis when it comes to marketing speak, the right hashtags. We're trending in all those ways. But our main goal is to help not ourselves but every other entrepreneur around the world who so desperately needs a categorically new platform like this.

Bill Draper9:10

But if you're not helping yourself out when you have someone else...

Arjun9:15

We'll help ourselves as well, but it's part of everyone else who's watching.

Polly Draper9:19

Have you ever run an organization before?

Arjun9:22

I have. So I started my first venture when I was a teenager, it was an ad network. Then came to college and started an advertising agency focused on social media marketing. And then after that, raised a little bit of money in my sophomore year to build out a visual project management tool for advertising agencies. That company went up to about 11 people and we raised about a million by the end of college.

Polly Draper9:41

You've kind of got this serial entrepreneur in you. We're always looking for somebody who's completely dedicated to what it is they're doing and stick with it forever kind of thing. How can you convince us that that is the way you're going?

Arjun9:56

It's a great question. So about a year ago when we had $12,000 in the bank and I told our investors, this is a situation I've had to let go of a co-founder because of cultural misfit, and they said, "Well, you can shut the company down and we will invest in the next thing." I told them that no matter what happens, I will do whatever it takes to build this company, ship product and get clients. Fast forward 10 to 12 months, we have exactly that. And I put in about $160,000 of my own money into the company, all of our savings, all of our credit lines. That's the kind of person that you're looking at: an entrepreneur that doesn't give up. And we ship, we finally did ship, and we are generating revenue now.

Bill Draper10:32

So what does this look like 10 or 20 years from now?

Arjun10:36

The next Salesforce driven entirely by data science for every small and medium-sized company.

Tim Draper10:42

We're going to determine whether you go on to the finals. But even if you don't, the viewers can actually vote to get you into the finals. So for the crowd fund, can you look at that camera and tell them why they should invest with you and what you're going to be doing with the money?

Arjun11:00

Hi everyone, the reason why you should invest in a company like Woofie is because it's built by an entrepreneur that is building a platform for people like you, the entrepreneurs all around the world. The way we will make sure that we use your money in the best way possible is by hiring the data scientists and the other engineers that we need to build out the platform and make sure that we're building a robust tool so that you have a fighting chance when it comes to digital marketing.

Tim Draper11:28

We're really excited that you came back on the show. Thanks and congratulations, and thanks for being a part of the Drapers.

Arjun11:35

Absolutely, thank you.

It felt really good presenting our case, presenting our mission. And I think all the judges were able to understand where we were coming from. One of the things that Bill Draper often says is that you have to be very empathetic. The entrepreneur you're looking at has spent a lot of time while doing a full-time job running the business, before hours and after hours. And finally now that I'm full-time, we have product in the market, we have traction, we have revenue, we have customers. And now we just need better avenues of distribution to get this product into everyone's hands who so desperately needs this categorically new platform.

Guest Judge12:12

He pitched me and that's my main concern: who is running the show, how committed they are, how interesting and captivating they are. And he had it all. To the same note, I think this is a resilient founder. This space is kind of crowded like Ezra mentioned, Hootsuite and all these other platforms that really help you do similar things. But I think they will figure it out.

Oh, I think there are people who are doing this much better. And if it's data science, then you already have much bigger companies that have access to those data sets to be better able to do this. Like Google's getting into it. So now when you go and post an ad on Google, they actually tell you exactly what copy would work better, gives you suggestions and do all of that for you. I really like him, I just think this is not a problem he's made to solve in life.

Bill Draper13:02

I said it: decent entrepreneur, but this problem is going to get solved by someone who has much better data.

Tim Draper13:10

See, I think the emojis are a wedge in. They get him in and then he can start adding more services. And he'll get the...

Guest Judge13:19

He's not going to get the influencers. It's not a data science problem, it really is not. This is a very creative problem. People have been doing this who are very good at creating viral things. And data science tells you what happened, not what is going to happen. So you don't create the ad for tomorrow, you create the ad for yesterday.

Tim Draper13:35

Yeah, if something's very topical, that's my point right now. They're not going to catch it the next time. So it's going to have to be for more consistent branding for somebody that they would use this.

Guest Judge13:47

If I were ever to invest in him, I would invest in him the person that has been able to talk us into this as if it's something awesome.

Tim Draper14:00

What I'm going to ask each of you to do is come up with the winner of the three that you just saw. Might be tougher for you, Ina Vase. The three companies we saw were Woofie, Alfa, and All EBT. So Ezra, do you have a winner?

Guest Judge14:17

Yeah, Alfa.

Tim Draper14:19

How about you?

Guest Judge14:20

Yep, girls rule! Girls, yup, they certainly are going to have a great start.

Tim Draper14:29

I was torn only because EBT was what you said at the beginning, it's the thing that could impact the most people and change the world. And the other is about decorating walls, but it feels like it's so fledgling right now. I would be a little wary about putting money behind it.

Guest Judge14:49

I'm actually torn also, but it's between Alfa and Woofie. The Woofie business I understand a little bit more just because of the first business I had was doing this for clients. And I think if he nails that experience and is able to get these digital agencies and digital marketers and small businesses that help other small businesses, if he nails that product I think it could be big. There is a lot of competition, but at the end of the day I believe in him. So it's going to be Woofie.

Polly Draper15:16

So you didn't see Alfa, I didn't see it, but I think from what I'm hearing I would have voted for All Early BT. That's the problem worth solving. Someone should focus on it even though it's not a root cause, but at least someone thinking right about helping people do better.

Bill Draper15:32

Normally I just go straight to the crystal ball, but I think I need to sort of weigh in a little bit because I actually think that it's between Woofie and All EBT. Woofie I think could open up a whole new way of communicating and I think that could be the future. And EBT I think could grow to be like all governments everywhere. Whereas Alfa, two great women doing kind of interesting things, it is not tough to do, there is no barrier to entry there. So I am less inclined on Alfa. And so I guess we're just going to have to go and consult the crystal ball. Woofie, All EBT, Alfa...

Tim Draper16:35

Okay, we're going with All EBT. It's a big surprise for all of us, but I think that's where we're going. I think gov tech changes everything. I think it is ripe for the picking, it's a big market. The entrepreneur, he's got potential, he's been to Draper University so that's good news. At least he's had that training. And he stole your sleeping time for his team.

Guest Judge17:02

I wasn't sure what the moral of that story was, but whatever. Four people got warm because one person froze it up. Yeah, but he's still alive, the authority figure.

Tim Draper17:12

If the viewers out there wanted Alfa or they wanted Woofie, they can vote to get them into the finals. They can also invest in all those companies. It is in your hands as to what happens here at Meet the Drapers. So thank you all for watching, this was another great show, and we're going to see you next week on Meet the Drapers.

We adopted him the last time by the way. You were all adopted now, yeah. All Drapers. We come to the family. Andre, I'm waiting for the bill. I'm ready for the new will for you to amend your will now.

Bill Draper18:02

There won't be much left there, don't worry about it.