Silicon Global Online: Ask A VC show features Tim Draper

Well, hello, Tim. We're here with ours. Yeah, it's good to see you. It's been a long time.

Absolutely.

Well, are you chiming in from San Mateo?

No. Well, I'm chiming in from the Silicon Valley. I'm in my home office.

Okay.

And Yeah, it tends to be that I'm— this is usually a day when I go into the office, usually Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'm in the office.

Right.

But I'm traveling tomorrow, so I'm home today.

Okay, okay, got it, got it. Well, I just want to welcome everyone to our show today with Tim Draper, founding partner of DFJ and now at Draper Associates. He's based in Silicon Valley. He's a global venture capitalist. He's done China, India. He's done the heartland. He's done Silicon Valley. He's done all kinds of technology innovators, innovations. He invested in Hotmail at an early stage, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Bitcoin. What else, Tim? What are the other? Oh, Baidu.

And then a bunch of companies that didn't, didn't do quite as well.

Oh, okay. All right. Okay. Well, uh, today we get to talk about the good ones and the bad ones and how you're doing on, um, you know, your next fund. Um, and, uh, maybe we'll get to a little talk, a little bit about Pittsburgh, because Draper Triangle was in Pittsburgh. And, you know, I've been on this Heartland With the new book, and, uh, I spent some time in Pittsburgh. Uh, so here's my new book, uh, Silicon Heartland, just launched in March, available on Amazon or Barnes Noble or anywhere else you would like to look where they sell books. Um, and it's my 4th book. And, uh, yeah, so there it is, transforming the Midwest from Rust Belt to Tech Belt. And Tim is in the book. Uh, Tim.

Yeah, buy it. It's great.

Yeah, it's great.

And Rebecca writes well, so you're gonna like it.

Okay, that's great. So then we also had your, um, Pittsburgh, uh, partners on, on the show from Magarac, and, uh, they were on the show earlier on.

The Draper Triangle team?

Yeah, the Magarac.

Oh, the group from, uh, from Draper, from Ohio? No, no, the Pittsburgh group.

Yeah, the Pittsburgh group.

Yeah, yeah, they were Draper Triangle. Did they change their name? Yeah, without me knowing.

Oh, good. I think, I think, you know, um, uh, but anyhow, their name is cool because it comes from this famous, uh, or legendary steelworker Who had these arms, these gigantic arms as big as ladles or something, and Magorak was his name. So it's Magorak Ventures in Pittsburgh now.

Fantastic. Well, Pittsburgh's been so good and the team there is so good.

Yeah.

They've really driven Carnegie Mellon, and I think—

Oh yeah.

Carnegie Mellon has generated a lot of entrepreneurs, and I I think that the timing actually around now is pretty good for robotics. It's been tough to make money in robotics historically, but now with ChatGPT, everybody understands that you can do general artificial intelligence. That means a robot can learn. That changes everything. All of a sudden, you get robots that can learn and you do you can, you can make huge leaps. So I'm, I'm pretty excited about what entrepreneurs might be coming out of Carnegie Mellon.

Yeah, I was just there about 3 weeks ago, and I met with Dave Mawhiney, who's head of the Entrepreneurship Center there, and they are going strong. There was a real buzz around the campus, and, you know, you could kind of feel that entrepreneurial buzz. That's fun when you feel that, like a little bit like at Draper University.

Yeah, yep, that campus. I also love that they have that— they have robot contests and robot wars and all of robot races, all sorts of things that happen over there.

Yeah, there's a lot of cool things happening in Pittsburgh with astrobotic technology, you know, flying to the moon to look for water and all those mobility startups and AI trucking companies in a convoy. But Locomation, it's called. So anyhow, but Tim, let's talk about what catches your eye these days in tech, in the tech world. What kind of deals are you doing and why?

Well, so I'm still a big Bitcoin lover. I think it's just making us all freer, more open, It's a global currency. It's not some fiat currency that keeps poor people down. It's the opposite. Everyone can be a Bitcoiner. Anyone can have— not everyone can have a bank account, but everyone can have a Bitcoin account. It's going to change everything, and it's just a matter of time. And the weak leaders are the ones who are trying to stop it or keep it down or whatever. And the strong leaders are the ones who trust people and set them free, and great things happen. Yeah, so that's one. Another one—

Are you hanging on to all your holdings in Bitcoin or not?

Oh yeah, oh absolutely. And adding to that, we also get more because, uh, I, I, um, I take Bitcoin for rent at Hero City. I take Bitcoin for tuition at Draper University. We take advertising, we take Bitcoin for advertising at Meet the Drapers. Now we got 40 million viewers of Meet the Drapers. And so yes, I am increasing my stake in Bitcoin as we speak. And then the second thing, I think there are about 5 basic themes. The second one is ChatGPT and how it's changing everything. Everything from lawyers' jobs are going to be different, accounting jobs will be different, teaching jobs will be different, professors, software designers are going to have different jobs, researchers are going to have different jobs, all because of ChatGPT. It's almost like We were all monks copying the Bible over and over and over, and all of a sudden somebody invented the printing press, and boom, we've got ChatGPT, whole new thing. And then in medicine, there's digitization of diagnostics, and that is usually tied to big data and machine learning. That's all about you know, your medical records and what you had for breakfast and what your Fitbit says and what airplane you sat on and what your blood test results were and your genetic history and all that stuff. All that data is going to make for really good diagnostics. And then on therapeutics, that's all being digitized. So you're getting companies starting that are doing computational biochemistry where You see that there's a disease and, and then you test a bunch of drugs against that disease and you come out with something. Well, those 2 trends are coming together into personalized medicine. So I think there's something there.

Well, you're making me think—

I'm kind of looking for a— I'm kind of looking for a Steve Jobs moment in the, in the Bitcoin space. I It's still too hard for people to set up. I mean, engineers have no problem. They don't even think this way, but still too hard for people to set up an account and store their Bitcoin, use their Bitcoin, pay for things with their Bitcoin, accept Bitcoin. Those Those are coming. And also you want to be able to store NFTs, you want to be able to store smart contracts, all that stuff.

Okay. So those are 2 of the things. That's taking a while though, Tim. Why is that taking so long? I mean, this has been around for a while now. Why is it taking so long to happen?

Well, people went off on that centralized token thing, and I think it was a mistake. We avoided it. So we turned down FTX twice, we turned down BlockFi. We turned down all those centralized tokens. Decentralized currency like Bitcoin, where you have to mine for it, is a better way to go. It just is. It's— I mean, if you want centralized currencies, you've already got them. You got, you know, the dollar and the Argentinian peso and the Nigerian naira. It's all these currencies where the governments irresponsibly print money, create inflation, and devalue your currency. And then there's Bitcoin. And Bitcoin, there are only 21 million of them. No one can devalue the currency. There will always be 21 million of them. It's just better. Anyway, the other 2 areas I kind of like, one is space and transportation. Space is just— Elon has sort of broken 2 logjams there, one because of Tesla, one because of SpaceX. But we've seen so many really interesting vehicles and so many really interesting technologies to explore and innovate in space. And everything from jetpacks to electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles on the transportation side, electric boats, whatever. And in space, we're seeing replacements for the space station. We're seeing companies that are mining asteroids. We're seeing companies that are mining the moon for water. And in all these companies that are sort of going, oh, if we're going to Mars, how are we going to live there? And so 3D-printed houses, robotic miners, all sorts of interesting things that don't require humans to build. So you got healthcare, you got Bitcoin, you've got—

Space.

ChatGPT, the AI, and you got space and transportation. I'd say then the 5th one is other. Other is where we make all our money. And it's— we don't— we have no idea where it's going to come from, but some entrepreneur is going to come to us and say, hey, we can teleport people, or hey, we can feed you with a food drop, or we can whatever it is.

They—

anyway, the other category is really where the great innovations are happening, and we're keeping our eyes open for those. And I guess we see those other companies more than others do because we Our job really is to find needles in the haystack.

Right.

We look for companies through Draper Startup Houses around the world, through students that go through Draper University, entrepreneurs they refer to us through Meet the Drapers. Now it's like It's pretty interesting. It's like 1 in 30 people get into Draper University now. It's hard to get into. And now it's like 4 out of 1,500 that get on the show, Meet the Drapers. And those were, you know, 10 years ago, they were just a twinkle in my eye. And now it's a big deal. big deal. Now both of them are huge. I mean, we're gonna be— we're an incredibly popular show in India.

Wow.

In Brazil, it's been translated. We had— we've had some amazing guest judges from Joe Montana, 4-time Super Bowl champion, to Rosie Rios, who was the Treasurer of the US. to a beauty queen from Sri Lanka, to a— oh, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the biggest guru in the world. He has 500 million followers. We've had some really amazing guest judges.

I really hope someday that my show, Ask a VC, can really And get to a fraction of what the Draper Show is.

You just get started, you keep going, you get a following, and we didn't think it was going to take off like this, but it sure did.

Yeah, well, that's good. We've had 55 VCs on the show from around the world, including from China during COVID Oh boy.

Yeah, a lot of VC wisdom there, I'm sure.

Oh, well, there is, there is. So, Tim, you said you've had a lot of startup successes. You've also had some startup hits or misses, I guess. So I guess everybody must be wondering about Theranos, your view on Theranos at this moment.

Oh yeah. Boy, what a blow. That's a blow for entrepreneurs everywhere, for female entrepreneurs. You know, it's tough if you build a business, nice-sized business, and it grows. Don't ruffle too many feathers, everything's fine. But if you build a business that's going to take— going to completely transform an industry and take down an oligopoly or a monopoly that has really been living very high off the hog and providing bad service at a high cost, you are going to be under attack. And I think that's what happened.

Hmm.

I think she got attacked and she got scared and she surrounded herself with lawyers and wasted a lot of money on lawyers. And, um, now, uh, she got led right down the primrose path. I think she never spoke out in the press. She never responded. I mean, she, she had the tiger by the tail. She had a— she had 2 FDA-approved tests and more to come. And somehow she got scared. And boy, fear is the mind killer and it's the life killer. So, um, yeah, but I'm, I'm always supporting the entrepreneur through thick and thin.

Yeah.

What I do.

Yeah.

I believe in the entrepreneur. I believe in what they do. I believe in them pushing the edge. And particularly those ones who are going after oligopoly that provides bad service at a high cost. I mean, big pharma, anything big, bulge bracket banks, big insurance.

Yeah.

The big 3 accountants, they're all providing bad service at a high cost. And I'm looking for those little entrepreneurs that are that are going to challenge those big monopolists.

Well, good for you. What do you make of the Silicon Valley Bank situation?

You know, it's pretty interesting. It's another situation where you've got an oligopoly in banks.

Banks—

if you tried to start a bank today, I mean, God, I don't know how much it would cost you, but a lot in regulation. And what happens over time is an industry takes off and it's very exciting and it helps everybody, and banking did that. And then the regulators come in and they start adding more regulations. And as they do, fewer and fewer participants can comply. And so it shrinks the field and the consumer loses. So the more governments regulate, the more the consumer loses. And so the banks and the government, the FDIC and other banking regulators, all sort of worked together and kind of collaborated. And they had this cushy relationship. They got very cozy. And the government kept adding more regulations and the banks Fewer and fewer banks were around, and the local banks were all getting pushed out of business, and it's concentrating more and more into the bigger and bigger banks. Well, those regulations keep piling up, and there are fewer and fewer banks, and then the government does something stupid like printing a whole bunch of money. and making our currency worth less. And that's what inflation is all about. If the government prints a whole bunch of money, there's more money out there. There are more— let's say we'll talk about naira. The government decides they want to print a bunch of naira. Let's say there are a billion naira out there. Government decides to print 400 million naira. Well, suddenly the naira is down by about a third, a little bit more than a third. And, uh, and then the naira is worth less, like a third less. And that's basically what happened to the dollar. We printed about 40% of the dollars that were out there.

Wow.

And all of a sudden they're surprised that we're having inflation.

Yeah.

And then they're surprised that they have to raise the interest rate. And then we have to raise the interest rate. And then it's like, oh, we're surprised that we've driven a few banks out of business. Well, it turns out that's one of the biggest arguments for Bitcoin there is.

Yeah.

It's like, look, there's no central authority that can drive you out of business. They can overprint, they can inflate, they can raise interest rates on you. There are only 21 million of them. There will always be 21 million of them.

Okay.

I told my companies after Silicon Valley Bank came crashing down that weekend, um, we were able to get our clients' money out of Silicon Valley Bank just before it closed. We were lucky because we had a good finance team and they were on the phone. They were Go, go, go. Well, the government came in there and stopped everything on that Thursday. So over the weekend, I got calls from a whole bunch— I got emails from a whole bunch of our companies saying, we need emergency funding because all we've got is money in Silicon Valley Bank. And if that goes away, we're not going to make payroll. And as a board member or a A founder of a company, you're responsible for payroll, personally responsible for payroll. So the government puts two things out there. They say you're personally responsible for payroll, and we're not necessarily covering your payroll with this bank. So they've they've made it very awkward for all of us. So what I've told all of them after the the government came in and. shored it up and sort of kicked the can down the road. They call that kicking the can down the road. I feel like it's, it's more like, like putting another Band-Aid on an infection.

Oh yeah.

It's getting worse and worse and worse. They keep putting more Band-Aids on, and eventually that infection is going to kill the corpus.

Yeah. What do you think is going to slow down venture capital spending and venture capital fundraising as well? It's going to hurt the VC industry.

Well, I'll get to that in a sec, but I— what I told my companies was put your money into 2 banks, maybe one US and one foreign, and then make sure you have 2 payrolls worth of money in Bitcoin so that you can cover payroll if there's this domino effect and all the banks start to fail. So what— now you ask about venture capital funding. Yeah, well, it's dried up and people say, oh, there's this overhang. Well, that overhang is pretty much committed capital. I would not count on a lot of venture capital coming out in the next 2 years for startups and for new companies. And I think Entrepreneurs have to reset their sights. They've got to really get their money from customers because it's not going to be coming from venture capitalists. So it's very difficult. And we, when we're fundraising during a bear market, we know it is much harder.

Right. So how's that going? Your fundraising?

We can't tell you anything about that. There's a— there's yet another regulation that says we can't tell you anything.

Okay. Oh, I just thought I'd sneak that question in. Okay, let me, uh, let me, uh, get some questions here from our audience. They've been patiently waiting. Uh, okay, Al Kalman. Uh, all right.

Hal?

You know Hal, probably.

I love Hal.

What did he say? He wants to know what factors do you look for when deciding to shut down a new venture in a new industry?

So if it's a new venture in a new industry, I try to keep it alive because I think it has a shot. If it's an old venture in an older industry, I think that it's more likely I'll want to fund a new venture in a new industry because they're dealing with older technologies. So if you're starting a company now, you have technology. Let's say you're competing with somebody who started a business 10 or 15 years ago, you're competing with technology that is 1,000 times worse than what you've got when you're getting started. Because if Moore's Law doubles the compute power every 18 months, you go 15 years, you've got 1,000 times better technology now than you did back then. So why not start a new business? So if you're in an existing business, This is a really good time to start thinking about replanning, rethinking what it is you operate with and try to keep those customers, but at the same time start to innovate.

Right, because you're not going to be getting that venture capital funding so easily this time around.

Yeah, and I think, Hal, you also said don't throw money— good money after bad in a C or D round. I am with you 100%. The one thing you, you might want to do is if you've got a profitable company and it's dropped down and the business is still cranking along, then you might get a bargain. But if you have an unprofitable business and you had a very high-priced round C or D 2 years ago, And now they're coming back for money, that you're in danger territory there.

Okay. Good answer. All right. David Brown has a question. His is very specific to an industry. Okay. He's leading a venture that's seeking to disrupt the automotive seatbelt with a materially safer seatbelt with smart sensors and integration into the emergency response ecosystem. Sounds good. The forces to sustain the status quo are laudable.

Yeah, that was the one thing I was thinking. First, I was thinking, yeah, that's a cool idea. Seat belts should be changed. I mean, that, that's a big deal. And the second thing I thought was, regulators are a pain in the neck. And when you try to innovate in something that's safety-related, yeah, they just get in care. And then they ask you so many questions and then they start regulating you. I would be— the best way to probably do that is to use the innovation and see if you can design it into automotive and go direct, go to Elon, go to, you know, Chrysler, Ford. GM, Toyota, whatever.

Okay.

I, I think that's the best way to go. You will— yeah, people don't like change, but the seatbelt needs to be reinvented. So—

Yeah, yeah, good, good. So he's looking for investors who can fight these Detroit forces of stasis. Okay, good. All right, here's an anonymous attendee with kind of a very open-ended question. How can a smart investor or small investor participate with Draper Ventures startup? How do they get into your—

Well, they need a law change. In 1933 and 1940, they were going through the recession and they put in all these regulations. That was 80 years ago. They put in these regulations that keep people down, in my opinion.

Okay.

I think that we need to rethink those regulations. They've somehow decided that all crypto is securities, and the SEC is regulating by enforcement. It makes no sense. The whole thing is making no sense, and all it's doing is keeping impoverished people poor. And the only ones who can invest in private companies and real estate and private equity and venture capital and entrepreneurship and all of these really interesting, innovative, high-risk, high-reward industries, the only ones who can do it are, they have to either be, millionaires or they have to be geniuses, whatever. I think there are 2 things that need to happen. One is they got to get rid of that rule. And the other is that they should teach finance to 3rd graders, 4th graders, 5th graders.

They should.

Their finance is not complicated. It's— the math is not hard and the thinking is not hard. And, um, and so we really need, uh, major changes there. And, you know, I've tried a lot in education to try to change the system because it's dominated by, uh, teachers union bosses who like the status quo. They just want more teachers, and so they pay more dues or whatever, and they control California. I don't know if they control every state. They control California and they are not innovating. And, you know, I, I believe that the parents should choose the school that's right for their kid and the money should follow the kid and the bad schools should go out of business and the good schools should thrive. I, I believe that stuff. And I think that we would have much better education and we would have far fewer problems Like a small investor trying to participate because you have to be rich or super knowledgeable or they won't let you.

Yeah. So Tim, you have such a background and such a diversified background, diverse background. And did I— I know I'm remembering at one point where you were promoting this idea of California being split and several states. And are you still keen about that, or you gave up on that one? And also, related question, do you ever run for office, political office?

Well, government unions are a real problem. You know, unions, private unions make perfect sense. You got to negotiate with the boss. You got to figure it out. You can gather together and say, we want better wages. Fantastic. We don't want to be in the coal mines, whatever. But government unions are basically taking over government and spreading, and they are negotiating with themselves for higher wages. And sure, I'll vote for myself for higher wages. I'll vote for myself for bigger Pension, for better healthcare. I'm voting for myself. Anyway, the reason I want to split California—

That's a new idea, that everybody votes for themselves.

Anyway, the reason I want to split California is that, um, that has created, in effect, a corrupt system that's dominated by government unions. And we need a, uh, we need a shock to the system, and we needed a competitive field. We needed people to be accountable. We needed the governments to be accountable to their people. That, that's what they do. They're supposed to be us. And first I tried 6 Californias, and the government unions turned out, went out and told the signature gatherers who are also government unions not to count my signatures. And so 1.2 million signatures came out at 750,000, so they weren't enough. So the next time for 3 Californias, I went out and I tripled the number of signatures, and I, um, and I used 3 Californias, which polled a lot better. And I— they had to put that on the ballot. And so They started, they put her, they, it went through Secretary of State's office. We had all the signatures checked, everything was ready to go. They're just about to print the ballots for Proposition Number 9. And a day before they printed the ballot, the Supreme Court of California, somehow influenced by the unions, Took it off the ballot.

Huh.

So you didn't get to vote. The polling on 3 Californias started at 8%, went to 12%, went to 18%, went to 27%, and 35% were undecided. And so all of a sudden, we went from no way this will ever pass to this has probably got the momentum. To pass. And the union— government unions didn't like that, and they twisted the Supreme Court's arms and took it right off the ballot the day before they printed the ballot. So you never got to vote on 3 Californias.

Okay. All right. Well, let's move back to venture investment because we have so many questions waiting. in the queue, and one comes from a person who is interested in enhanced reality, and he says it has clear advantages over VR and AR. What's your view on that? Would you consider an investment in this new technology, hologram, like enhanced reality?

Yeah, we've enhanced reality. We already have an investment in a company called Proto, which does holograms. We have a lot of investments in VR. We have an investment in a company called Arthur that allows you to have a full board meeting in VR. And there are some real advantages to it because what you don't realize is that we are very limited by what's on the walls. And even if we have whiteboard walls, we're very limited. You can, in VR, you can push a spreadsheet away and you can pull in a Zoom call and you can write over here and you can talk with a group over here. You can have all sorts of things going on around you and almost simulating an office environment. And it's potentially much better. And I think that, um, VR goggles have to get down to just being glasses. And with glasses, you'll be able to easily flip them from VR to AR to some combination of it. And I think we're going to go through a major transformation there. So Yeah, great.

So what about Facebook and the Meta— or sorry, Meta and the metaverse? They apparently— I mean, all the news is saying, oh, well, they invested all this money in it. It's not really taking off. Do you think that there is a future there? A big future?

I think the news often looks at what's going on right now, and they have a good sense for that, but they don't have a good sense for what's going on in the future. I think when you make an investment like that, you're making the investment for a 5 to 10-year time horizon. Now, they may have gotten heat from their shareholders because they're public and they got to go quarter to quarter. So some of the investments, they might— the shareholders might look and say, wait, you know, stop this, this is bad. And they might pressure the board to do it. But I think it's just one of those things where it's just a matter of time and we'll get there. But it's like anything, the internet went like big boom, big bust. I remember the press saying nobody's ever going to put their credit card on Amazon. I remember the press saying this Google thing just keeps crashing, it's worthless. I remember the press saying that, oh God, there were so many of these like anti-internet, you know, the dot bombs, the whole thing. And then slowly but surely, these things became really big, so much bigger than anybody imagined back at the peak of the bubble. The peak of the bubble was like here. And it went to here. It went hundreds of times greater than the imaginations of people at the peak of the bubble. And so same thing happened with Bitcoin. It was like a bubble came up, came down, and now slowly but surely it's going way back up. It's going to be so much bigger than anybody ever imagined. And I think the same thing's going to happen with VR. And AR and XR and every R. IRL. It's all going to be— it's all going to be bigger than anybody ever imagined. So you'll see the hype bubble, it'll drop down, and then it kind of goes flying high.

Okay, so this ties in with a question about your— about a timeline for federal regulation. and the SEC to understand, regulate, and tax crypto and Bitcoin?

You know, you hit on tax, which really is something that they— if they had any brains in their head, they would immediately just look at Bitcoin and say, well, look, if you run a business all in Bitcoin, we can tax you automatically in Bitcoin. And we don't need accountants, we don't need auditors, we don't need anything. We can tax you. It's done automatically on the blockchain, perfectly honest. And, uh, but instead they're, they're afraid of it and they're going, oh no, we have to go back to the mighty dollar, which is, by the way, weakening. It's a very difficult— it's very difficult to continue to cheer for the mighty dollar, watching as the rest of the world is saying, yeah, not so sure. And all of the young people in the world are saying, hey, forget the dollar, we want Bitcoin, we want crypto, we don't want any centralized currency.

Yeah.

And so as a result, people that declare that they're in power feel that they're losing their power by not controlling these currencies. And I think they're making a huge mistake. I think you can— the great leaders are the ones that trust people and they set them free and their economies grow at 8%, 10%. And the weak leaders are the ones who try to control everybody and regulate and penalize and make people's lives miserable. And we seem to have some combination of great and weak leaders in America.

Yeah.

What's the weak leaders? The weak leaders are trying to put their thumb down on crypto and Bitcoin. But the strong leaders are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, a lot of innovation happening here. We We need it. It's our golden goose. And then, and when China has a weak leader— China definitely is a weak leader— and he's trying to control everybody. And when he said Bitcoin was illegal in China, which he has said 13 times, which means the Chinese people aren't putting up with it, Japan immediately made Bitcoin a national currency. So I feel like it's gonna be like whack-a-mole trying to stop this incredible technology. It's just better currency. It's better. And they—I mean, a government that embraces it is going to be so much better off. This is this is one of those defining moments. It's like when Lee Kuan Yew took over Singapore, or when. Korea, South Korea became a free country. They grew like crazy. They were— it was a defining moment for both of them. For 70 years, they've grown at extraordinary rates.

Right.

And, um, and so I think the countries like El Salvador and Central African Republic and Switzerland and Japan and Gibraltar and Malta are going to thrive. And the countries who are trying to put a, put a block on these, um, these new currencies are, um, are going to lose. It's going to be like they'll go flatline.

Yeah.

They'll lose. And it's not just that you lose because you've lost all that technology. You lose the spirit of entrepreneurship.

Right.

You lose all the innovation that happens when people use a new technology.

Yeah.

So it's gotta— hopefully we'll get a turnover in government. I don't care what party it is. We just have to turn it over.

Okay. There's another question here, Tim, on global VC. And are you optimistic about Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Southeast Asia in effect? What's your view?

Yeah.

Or VC.

I think it all depends on— it's weird. Now that I've met all the leaders in the world, or many of them, I find that leadership has a big role to play. If a leader is someone who trusts people and sets them free, the free people will innovate and try things and And they'll grow at extraordinary rates. Their economies will grow way faster than anybody ever imagined. And then the countries where the leader thinks that he's got to tell everybody what to do, they will stagnate and people live in fear and their economies will flatline. You're seeing it happen in China now. See, I mean, Russia, if they didn't have oil, they would be Completely out of business. North Korea, Cuba. I mean, those countries— anybody who says they think socialism's a good idea should go visit Cuba. Oh my God, the worst food I've ever had, bad service. The people are delightful, wonderful, warm people, and they are suffering under a very Authoritative, socialistic, horrible system. No one can do anything. No one can innovate. No one can sell anything. It's all government-run.

Yeah. So what about China, Tim? High-tech and decoupling in China-US, decoupling high-tech. You think it's going to continue? I know You're not investing in China anymore, right?

No, I pulled out. It was one of my favorite places to go. I love the Chinese entrepreneurs. They were full of spirit and spunk, and they were doing great things. And we did very well there. But then I got a pretty early indication that the new president was going to be a command and control guy. And so he made it so that, you know, he was a fun sponge. He was a killjoy. He killed the entrepreneurial spirit in China, and I can't believe they've let him stay in power. And I can't believe he hasn't seen the light. I mean, at some point you got to say, hey, I think we've been screwing up for a while. Maybe it's time to free the people again. G. And I don't like barriers between countries. I don't like trade wars. I don't like decoupling.

Mm-hmm.

I don't like the idea of a war. I like the idea of the innovation that happens when people are afraid and they build, you know, defense, really cool defense projects. But only for their commercial purposes.

Right.

So I really don't like that we are, in effect, all decoupling, preparing for war.

Right.

I don't like that. I think olive branches are much better and free countries are much better.

Yeah. So would the Draper affiliate do anything with Hong Kong?

The Draper affiliate, would they do anything with what?

With Hong Kong, it's a specific question.

We are doing a lot with Taiwan. Okay. And we're encouraging the Taiwan government to be more welcoming of Chinese entrepreneurs. Okay. Most of the Chinese entrepreneurs have headed to Singapore. Right. Hong Kong is China now. I mean, I think it's—I think they. Anybody with a brain got their money out of Hong Kong. Uh, I think, yeah, you don't want to be stuck in China or in Hong Kong as China is like, yeah, coming in with a militia. Okay. I mean, the poor Hong Kong people with their umbrellas trying to not be seen, but they're out there protesting.

Yeah.

That's a tough Yeah.

Okay. There's one last question. I know you have to go. It's a very specific related question, so we'll just try to get an answer quickly from you. It's— he's in a company that's— he's thinking about investing his time and money into a company that's focused on creating SaaS solutions for the huge nonprofit sector, which for the most part is using old technology. Any advice?

You know, at first I thought those were separate entities, for-profits and nonprofits. Now I think it's just a construct. I remember my dad, he created the first venture philanthropy group in Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. They were looking at a company that was going to be a bank and they were going to do all this microlending. It was called Kiva.

Uh-huh.

And they were going to do all this microlending and the regulators made it very clear that they could never afford to do microlending. with bank regulations. And this is why banks will only take your— you know, it's not worth it to open a bank account for $1,000. Banks lose money on that because regulations are so intense. But so the clever entrepreneurs say, well, what if we're a nonprofit? And they say, well, as a nonprofit, you can do anything. And so as a nonprofit, they didn't have to be regulated as a bank, and they went out and they did microlending. They became a huge success, hundreds of millions in loans, and have helped people all around the world to get themselves out of poverty. It has been an enormous success. But I start thinking when people try to segment nonprofits from for-profits, Both have to make money. Both have to find products that work for them. Both have to innovate. Both have to provide a service that people want. And so if you're just targeting the nonprofit sector, it's sort of like you want to play for the B team.

Mm-hmm.

I think you want, I think you want to think about it as, Hey, this product's so good, every company, every corporation, nonprofit or for-profit, gonna want to use this. Um, and there have been a lot of, of SaaS companies going after nonprofits, so that part's not really inventive. But, uh, eventually, uh, you'll come up with something, so keep at it.

Okay, that's really good advice, Tim. We really appreciate your wisdom and your risk-taking nature. You're Mr. Risk Master, right? And we look forward to your next book, maybe. And yeah, we'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it goes. It's still— I can only write it when I'm on, you know, transcontinental flights. Oh, that's when I get it done.

Okay, when's the next one of those?

Tomorrow.

Oh, tomorrow. Okay, which is why we need to sign off now.

Nice to see you. Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks, everybody who joined.

All right. Yes. All right. Send me a link. We'll see you next time. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Hello.

You're still on the camera.

I am?

Yes. I just saw you put your hair up. You're still on camera. Oh, that's nice. Turn off your camera. We're watching you take off your scarf and put your hair up. Alright. I'm taking it off right now. Ending it. Goodbye, everyone.