Timothy C. Draper

Timothy Cook Draper is the founder of the global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Draper is third in a line of venture capitalists. His father, William Henry Draper III (Bill Draper), founded Draper & Johnson Investment Company in 1962, Sutter Hill Ventures in 1968, Draper International India in 1996, and Draper Richards in 2001. His grandfather William Henry Draper Jr., the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist founded Draper, Gai... more

Timothy Cook Draper is the founder of the global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Draper is third in a line of venture capitalists. His father, William Henry Draper III (Bill Draper), founded Draper & Johnson Investment Company in 1962, Sutter Hill Ventures in 1968, Draper International India in 1996, and Draper Richards in 2001. His grandfather William Henry Draper Jr., the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist founded Draper, Gaither and Anderson in 1959. Tim Draper is the widely recognized creator of "viral marketing." His original suggestion to use "viral marketing" in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique to hundreds of businesses. Although Draper coined the term, "viral marketing," various viral campaigns preceded this invention (see MCI's Friends & Family Plan launched in 1991, a full 5 years prior to Hotmail's... less