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Welcome to Market Overtime. I'm Nicole Petalides. Today we're joined by legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper, founder of Draper Associates and an early investor in companies including Tesla, SpaceX, Skype, Hotmail, Coinbase, and Baidu. We'll discuss where he sees the next major opportunities in technology from AI infrastructure and automation to Bitcoin, decentralized finance, SpaceX, and also the future of startup investing. Tim, it's great to have you with us. Thank you for being with us today.

Fun to be here, Nicole. This is great. I'm looking forward to it. You go ahead and fire and we'll have some fun today.

Well, I have a big lineup planning to fire. I have plenty of firepower here. But first, I have to say, I get to meet the Draper. I'm one of the Drapers. There it is. I mean, I think that's so much fun. Everybody wants to meet the Drapers, but it's me. I got the opportunity and so happy to speak with you. I mean, the show's been so incredibly successful. I believe you are taping your 10th or 11th season. Why do you love it? You've been all over the world. Just tell us a little bit about the show and some of the great— you know, when you look at people who are entrepreneurial and you say this person deserves the money, what goes with that?

Well, when I started the show, it was— I would drag in any entrepreneur I could and try to get them to be on the show with me. And the only person who would watch it was my mother. And then as time went on, we instituted crowds— crowdfunding so that the viewer could invest in the companies. And then, and then it started to get very popular. And then we started to go international and we did all these kind of amazing things. And now it reaches 300 million people and about 10 to 20 million watch each show. So it's gotten to be a really big deal. And what's happened is it not only helps us see a lot of interesting entrepreneurs, because I'm a venture capitalist, I like the idea that it that these things I do bring me deal flow. But it also allows the people who get on the show to supercharge their business. And that's just really fun for startups. So we've had, we've had a lot of fun with the show. I— we had a— this most recent season is all U.S., and that's really the first time we've really gone to the U.S. We tended to do it to attract entrepreneurs from other parts of the world. And one of the U.S. stops was Hawaii. And it was part of, part of what we do is we do a little cultural thing. So the cultural thing was walking up this waterfall or walking up to a waterfall. And I got to the waterfall and I thought, God, I'm at a waterfall. I should just get down into the bottom of the waterfall. So I walked up, jumped in, and I looked down and there were a bunch of entrepreneurs way down at the bottom. And I said, hey, anybody want to pitch me? And they all— like, one guy just sprints straight up the waterfall and jumps in with me and starts pitching me in the waterfall. But we've had so much fun and we have guest judges there. that are so great. We have these guest judges, like, and we adopt them as Drapers. So, yeah, we now have Joe Montana Draper, and, you know, 4-time Super Bowl champion. We have Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Draper, the biggest guru in India. We've had Rosie Rios Draper. She's Draper, Draper, Draper, Draper. She's been on the show 4 times. She's Former treasurer of the U.S. She signed all your dollar bills.

Just quickly, the entrepreneurs of today, how do you compare them to yesteryear? I mean, are they more ambitious, less ambitious? Getting capital is extremely difficult at this time. It's hard to raise. And are you finding them to be more cautious or different than years past?

Well, the entrepreneurs we look for are the entrepreneurs that have very big ambitions. That where they're transforming an industry, they're doing something really extraordinary because we seed entrepreneurs, we put the first money in. So like first money in Tesla, first money in SpaceX. But we were also first money in a whole bunch of companies that did not work. And, and, and the reasoning there is that we take these, these extraordinary risks on entrepreneurs who are trying something really big. And, you know, everything now, it's everything from reversing aging to colonizing the moon to making Bitcoin pervasive to all these amazing things these people are doing. And they're things that that are sort of— I call them heroes because they take long shots at extraordinary outcomes. And those outcomes can be so big that they're bigger even than the entrepreneur imagines they become because it's a big world. And so the entrepreneurs today, they are more savvy. They have seen more. They've There's a system now in place around the world for an entrepreneur to get funding. And that is, that is relatively new. And then the entrepreneurs over the last year or two are seeing that they can start a company with AI without hiring a whole bunch of people. And so they, they can start companies with very little money.

Tim, let me ask you this, because, Tim, I have a lot of questions for you. So let's try and fire through a lot of ideas here. I'll start with this. You look back at some of the early investments. We mentioned companies that you had Tesla investments— Tesla, Skype, Hotmail, Coinbase, SpaceX— which, you know, we look at the IPO news of 2026, SpaceX is there. Do you feel— was there one or two that you missed?

Oh yeah. Which ones quickly? Oh, well, Netflix, he came to me and I said, wait, why are you sending DVDs through the US mail? We're gonna be streaming in 18 months. And he said, the world's not ready for that yet. And I didn't understand what he meant, but what he meant was he's gonna get all the customers and then he's gonna stream to them. And I was just an idiot. And then I made another mistake not investing in LinkedIn, not realizing how incredibly extraordinary that LinkedIn network would become. And then I can blame myself for a bunch of them and I can also blame partners for some of them. But, you know, I sat with Sergey and Larry on an airplane and I said, and I came to my partners and I said, hey, you know, these guys at Google is pretty cool. And my partner said, Draper, you've gotten us into 6 search engines, you know, why do we need another one?

Yeah, right. Well, yeah, exactly. When we think about Google and Sergey and Larry, I get it.

Very.

That was a good one. Okay.

And I got outbid for— I got outbid for Facebook. We have had a lot of, you know, people say, well, you know, you've had this success. How about your failures? My failures were all failures to act.

Look, I mean, there's no failure, isn't there, to a certain extent? I mean, and I'm not even being sort of glass half full here. When you've had so many opportunities and you've had so many wins, Do you really view any of them as failures? I mean, you're talking about Sergey Brin and Larry and Reed Hastings and, you know, you mentioned Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, you're meeting with top people around the world. And now at this point, isn't there more opportunity? Is it this AI cycle that you're seeing? You know, where are the opportunities now? Where are the opportunities right now? Where do you evaluate a big idea today? And also, is it the founder The technology. What big ideas are today?

Yeah, when I was getting started in the venture business, you know, my dad was a venture capitalist and so were all of his friends or a lot of his friends. And they— and that made up the entire venture industry. They're like 6 people. And I went around and some of them said it's all about the people, my dad included. Some said it's all about the market and some said it was all about the technology. So Don Valentine talked about the market and Tom Perkins talked about the technology. And I realized that it's— that they're all right. And, and so we need to really evaluate all of those things and, and more. And actually, we're even using AI now to to help us evaluate companies. So the world is changing in a super fast way. We— our AI can evaluate their voice and see how— how— what their personality is through their voice. The AI can evaluate their facial expressions and determine their emotions and whether they're lying. And a lot of it is just Right now we're just using AI to verify our own feelings on companies. And we're also using it for sourcing and we're using it for post-investment help and pre-investment, pre-pitch help. We're using it in amazing different ways. It's really changing the whole nature of the venture capital business. And we're really— Yeah. Can we talk about—

I don't mean to interrupt you, but I think about as a venture capitalist, you're looking at AI and you mentioned AI infrastructure rather than the AI applications themselves. I mean, there's so many ways to do this. So what part of AI infrastructure are you in fact focused on? Are there parts that are undervalued to you right now that you say this is where I want to be?

Yeah. Another one I missed was OpenAI with Sam because I I was talking to Sam about the other thing he was working on, the universal basic income, that I think maybe should be universal earned income. But he never really— he told me a little bit about this nonprofit thing he was doing, but I didn't really dig in, and I should have. So, and I think in general AI, I think that is a battle for xAI, Grok, and OpenAI and all Claude, Anthropic. That boat has sailed. But what's really kind of interesting is that when we were in 1999, the biggest deal companies in the internet were AOL and Yahoo and a couple others. And it was only after the bust, after the bubble burst, that some of these other companies, Google, Apple, Amazon all took advantage of what was there. So we're looking around the periphery to see if there are companies that are doing AI that might end up being those companies, the ones that find the really beautiful applications for where AI will be used in the future.

Hmm. So applications, I mean, we think about things like transportation, logistics, manufacturing, robotics, even full self-driving. Has anything jumped out at you just recently? Is there a specific story that you can share on something that you're investing in right now?

Well, we've seen a couple of companies that are robot brain companies. So the idea is a robot goes around And the robot doesn't have to be humanoid. I kind of like the ones that don't look like people, that just do really interesting things. But they learn now. So where they used to be kind of, I pick this up, I move it over here, I drop it, pick it up, move it over here, I drop it. And they could be kind of trained to do that over and over and over. But what they weren't trained to do was let me feel what it feels like to pick up a piece of chicken or orange or something and something that's not rigid. And but over time, they move from being sort of an expert system to an LLM where they learn that if I pick this pitcher of water up and I pour it this way, it'll spill. But if I pour it a little bit, then it'll— it won't spill. And I think those kinds of learnings get better and better and better. And, and so I do think that there will be a really good application of AI will be in robotics. So we're very active there.

I do want to ask you just quickly, as we're on AI, Nvidia, is this the kind of name that still stays in its leadership role for the next few years? Any other names that are publicly traded that you like a lot here in the hyperscalers right now for investors to make some actionable moves with their portfolios?

The only thing that I will say is that every 20 years, 7 out of the 10 biggest companies in the world turn over and only 3 stay the same. I think Microsoft's made it through a couple of decades as still being one of the top companies in the world. But I think that turnover will happen faster now. We're seeing so much change at the, at the venture capital level that there will be extraordinary change as you move to the in the public markets and in who the great leader companies are. And it happens for a variety of reasons, but what usually happens is when a company sort of gets huge and flattens out, a lot of the great people spin out and do new startups. So we've had— now, one thing I do think might be happening is, I don't know if you're in any big pharma companies, but big pharma was all built on chemotherapies. They put a chemical in your body, it would have some effect, and then there would be an effect of the effect, and you'd have to get another chemical in there to fix that, and another chemical. And, and, uh, and it was like whack-a-mole. And some of the companies we're seeing now are bio cures, and so going from chemotherapy to bio cures, I think there will be a huge turnover in healthcare in the the public companies in healthcare. I think you'll see a very dynamic market there. I think you'll see a In AI, I think that's going to go back and forth, back and forth. In space, I think there's a lot of innovative activity in space. You know, of course, SpaceX has huge leadership there. But, but people are mining asteroids, they're colonizing the moon, they're doing— space is going to be a really interesting thing. I think we We're going to think it's completely normal to take a weekend and go to the moon.

I figured we could wrap that part of the story and then I could pick your brain on your Bitcoin investments. You know, I love your pin there. You've been a long time Bitcoin bull. Yeah. Oh, your tie. Oh yeah. Looking good, Tim. And so when we think about, you know, you're talking about $180 Bitcoin and that was the perfect segue because I think about, you know, where we're headed. Recently we've been as low as $60,000. We were up to $127,000. When we were at $60,000, do you stay a longtime Bitcoin bull? Do you buy more? What's your thesis as this matures and you have some regulation and regulatory approval and acts and things, you know, Genius Act, Clarity Act? Does this help you to be a big believer in Bitcoin?

So, yeah, all the regulatory things are a little speed bumps along the road. Bitcoin is a new model for society to have a global economy that is much more frictionless and open, transparent, keeps perfect records on the blockchain. And so I'm a, you know, I'm a believer that long term, this is Going to be a really important part of our world. And keeping perfect records means that you don't have to have all the checks and balances that you do with banks and governments because all of the records are kept automatically on the blockchain. So taxes are paid, people are paid, everything can be built into a smart contract and And so I, I look at it and I just constantly— we accept Bitcoin for, um, for rent, we accept Bitcoin anywhere I, um, I operate, I accept Bitcoin. And so my Bitcoin continues to increase. Now, at first I used to try to say to people, hey, this is going to change the whole world economy, why don't we Why don't you go get some? It is a good idea. And now I'm saying to people, look, if you're a fiduciary, if you are, um, if you're the treasurer of a business and you don't own Bitcoin, you're being irresponsible. Uh, if you're the, uh, if you're a central bank of a government and you don't own Bitcoin, you're being irresponsible. Because a fiat currency can inflate and become— and can lose— people can lose faith. And if they lose faith in the fiat currency, they will run to Bitcoin. And you could be stuck holding a bunch of dollars that become worthless. There could be a run on the banks. That was very close. We were very close after the Silicon Valley Bank went under. Uh, I think, and if you manage a family and you don't own Bitcoin, I, you know, for my recommendation for a family is that you should probably own about 6 months worth of Bitcoin. Keep your, keep your family alive for 6 months with Bitcoin because you don't want to be one of these people clawing at the bank bars to try to get your fiat out and get it into Bitcoin when when it hits. Because boy, when Silicon Valley Bank went under, that hit between Thursday at 2 o'clock and Thursday at 4 o'clock, and then it was shut down, gone. And so you want to make sure that you're well taken care of. And I think if you're a board of any kind of a business, you're responsible for at least 2 weeks and sometimes 4 weeks of payroll. And if you're responsible for that, you better have that in other vehicles other than fiat currency. So you should hold at least 2 to 4 weeks worth of currency to pay people off if your bank goes under. And then as a government, if your currency inflates and people lose faith in it, which happens all the time, you know, Cyprus and France and whatever. There are so many of these, and Argentina every 10 years, and Nigeria has been that way forever. Then you should make sure that you are somehow able to keep your government intact. And holding Bitcoin will be a big part of that. So yeah, this is going to be very important to all of us for years to come.

So we think about decentralized finance the way you're saying it and having it as a precautionary way to move with your business, probably a month's worth. You make your payroll with a family, you said 6 months worth, which is incredible. Are these some of the catalysts to move Bitcoin to new highs? You know, we— do you see Bitcoin going to $500,000, $1 million? And is that a catalyst for that when you see institutions using it, governments using it? You're talking about homeowners and families and businesses as we have to DeFi and do this. Does it become more and more valuable as each year passes? Because right now we saw a recent low of $60,000 in 2026, at least the first half year Then it doesn't make somebody feel like it for the long term. Is this a million-dollar thing or why should I be in it? Is it just a safety thing or is it also a good investment?

If you look at all the charts, it cycles because every 4 years it, it has these, the, the halvings. And so when there's a halving, there's a in effect, a reduction in supply of Bitcoin. And so the price naturally goes up before the halvings and during the halvings and after the halvings. And then it falls as, as the miners are able to accumulate more. And the miners are usually the downward pressure on the price of Bitcoin. But one thing that I've thought about is that part of the rise in Bitcoin is the rise in the value of Bitcoin, and part of it is the falling in the value of a dollar. A dollar today, you know, a year from now, that's 90 cents, and 2 years from now, it might be 75, and it just keeps dropping. So it's pretty easy for Bitcoin to go up against the dollar. So it really— your question is harder to answer than it seems on the surface because you're measuring it in dollars, and dollars are decreasing in value. You don't want to hold dollars forever because they just drop in value over time. And Bitcoin rises in value over time with— yes, given these 4-year Cycles, the cycle. But there may be a day when if there is a run on the banks and people do not have confidence in the dollar, then Bitcoin against the dollar becomes infinite. It is like my dad gave me a million-dollar bill when I was 10 years old, and I went, wow, a million dollars, what can I do with it? And he said, nothing. And I said, what do you mean nothing? And he said, that's a million Confederate dollars. The Confederates lost the war. People lost confidence in the Confederate dollar. They all wanted Union dollars. And the Confederate dollar inflated into no longer existing.

I think about young folks and when they're starting.

What are some of your pieces of advice to a young Well, young folks starting and young entrepreneur may be 2 different things, but young folks starting, I would recommend just get a job and it doesn't matter if you're paid or not. Just get a job, do it, build it, have pride in it, and you'll learn so much. I know Ron Johnson was a huge success with the Apple stores and everything he's done, almost everything. We all have ups and downs, but he started with a job coming out of Harvard Business School scraping gum off the floors at Target retailers. And just having that job, you start seeing things. You Your, your mind opens up to all the things that are going on in a business. And when you get that, then all of a sudden things start to click for you. And so I, I think it's important just to like get a job and throw yourself into it. That would be like for a 20-year-old, get there, get out there and do it. If you're a young entrepreneur, And you have some burning idea. I mean, the best advice anybody gave to any entrepreneur was Elon when he— I brought my Draper University founders over to Tesla when they had their big launch of the S car and Elon spoke to them and some entrepreneur said, hey, What would you recommend to a young entrepreneur? To Elon. Elon is exhausted. He's, you know, he's been building this thing. He's put this whole thing together. They're launching the S car. The governor is there. The— it's just this huge thing that he's— this thing that he's architected. And you could tell he's been up all night for 3 nights. And he just looks at it, looks at this woman and says, Don't do it. And for an entrepreneur, you hear don't do it and you think maybe I shouldn't do it. That means that you don't really have the burning desire in you and you probably shouldn't. But if you're an entrepreneur, a true entrepreneur, it won't matter what anybody says. You will, you have to do it. It's something you have to do. You've got to make this happen. It's a world that doesn't understand and you need to explain it to them.

Tim Draper, I loved speaking with you today. If you ever have a dinner party with all these folks we've mentioned over the show, you know, make sure to invite me. I hope you come back on the show and keep giving us updates because this has been truly fascinating. And even the index that you talked about, the innovation throughout the United States and how it fluctuates and changes. It's fascinating. Tim Draper, founder of Draper Associates, thank you for joining us here on Market Overtime. I'm Nicole Petalides. Thanks for watching Market Overtime.