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Adam Draper

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32
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2016-02-24
most recent
2016-02-24
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Think it's really interesting. I think it's pushing the limits of what's possible, which fall into most buckets that I would be excited by. By the way, I'm really excited about a lot of our portfolio companies. I just for the sake of this show, I wanted to pick one.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Okay, so as far as most excited, you know, I really don't like picking, I'll say like a couple really interesting concepts that I really hope get built to fruition because just of the methodology that we use, we really want essentially the market to decide which companies are really exciting for the world. We have one company in this tribe that's called JoyStream run by a solo founder who is trying to merge two technologies that have never been merged before, which is the peer-to-peer technology of BitTorrent with the peer-to-peer technology of Bitcoin. So basically incentivized BitTorrent. So you could essentially legitimize the BitTorrent space by being able to pay people for uploading their content. And so I don't know. I think it's weird.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “So, I mean, just going on the Harry Potter thing, I've read all of the Harry Potters many, many times and got all the releases. However, I will say right now I've reread this one other book. I'll stick away from Harry Potter for this one other book, which is called The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfis. The way it's written is just a really, really interesting thing. I like fantasy and sci-fi. I like sort of picking out a lot of people like business books, and I try to pick out business lessons from other books. So Ender's game, I think, is one of the best books on leadership, even though it's not technically a leadership book at all. Like that, I try to pick out themes that are running throughout the stories and try to learn things from the experience of the characters. And I just really love all of the concepts in this book name of the wind, so I highly recommend it.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “When we founded Boost VC together, Brayton Williams is his name. And when we would take, you know, throughout the day, you do all this work and then you won a 15 minute break or 15-minute breaks were Super Smash Brothers.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So that can't count. Okay, what I will say that the public probably doesn't know about me is my co-founder and I are probably two of the best Super Smash Brothers for N64 video game players on Earth.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You know, it's so funny, I would normally just say, you know, that I played tennis in Australia between high school and college, but I was just asked a question about tennis.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Okay, so if you're going non family, first off, my dad, I actually truly believe he has this way of seeing things that other people don't. And he's able to identify the crazy, insane idea that looks like a toy or something that could eventually be able to change the way people think. And so I'll stick with him because I really do think he's a huge thought leader just in this space. And he should be. He's been doing this for 30 years.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, I have not been there yet. Actually, they're building one in LA, which I'm really excited about. I really want to go. I was invited with a friend and the timing just didn't make it.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, well, I don't know if I get to meet her. I'm just thinking like, hey, I bet they have some sort of Harry Potter tour that I could go on. I don't know. I really like.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I was asked to go speak in Scotland, JK Riley lives in Scotland. And so it's sort of out of my way, but I really want to meet JK Rowling. So I'm like, it's in Edinburgh.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So I sort of have two ones from my sister, one's from a dad that I think about a fair amount. One is do something out of your comfort zone once a day. So you just try to drive yourself to, it's not like you need to be uncomfortable with it, but it should be pushing your limits a little bit. That's how I think of it. My dad, whenever he says when you're making a deal, you always want both sides of the table to be happy at the end of the deal. And so it's sort of a method where you want what you want, but you should cave on some things to make both sides happy. Muggle net, the Harry Potter blog? No, I'll say I probably read TechCrunch the most of any of the blog publications.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Oh my god, I'm so mad. Okay, so tennis was me. Yeah, I won tennis, but It was good. It was a good match. I caught my dad on an off day, I think. And then chess, my dad beat me and we played three games and he beat me all three, which normally it's not like that. And he was in the zone and I wasn't. So yeah, he's been, I need to play him again. We just played like a couple days ago. So that is a very fresh wound.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So I would say in the angel investing world, I don't want to say for a mistake to allow an entrepreneur to try to pursue their dream. At our stage, you're making such a bet on the person. You know, whatever they're working on, they truly believe what they're saying. They truly believe that their idea over the next seven to ten years is going to change the world. I don't believe it's really a mistake. I think sometimes it's just, you know, some companies are early, some companies are later. I would just think incremental technology breakthroughs are not as impactful to the world, but they still provide a service. A lot of them can be huge money-making companies for what we do. We are really trying to push the envelope on what's possible rather than what could potentially be a good business.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “For reality, but there are still a significant number that are in the range of auditing software to rockets. And so we do invest in literally the spectrum. However, we really are trying to focus on these emerging technologies, this frontier tech that we're really excited about.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, I'd really love to see more of the, you know, we invest in the future. I'd love to see more crazy stuff, not incremental changes. I want to see people pitching me space Bitcoin virtual reality stuff. Incremental changes aren't really enough, especially for what we are trying to do, which is launch these new incredible verticals we look at drones, we look at biohacking, we look at artificial intelligence, it's all the stuff that is on the cusp of having huge breakthroughs and might not necessarily have found the mass adoption piece yet. And so those are the things that we really push forward. So I just want to see we've done everything. So we do have a majority of our investments in blockchain. And then we have a significant number of investments in virtual.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I mean, I would say some companies are really being able to raise a lot of money, but most of those raises are based off of previous entrepreneurs or who have previous relationships. Yeah, it's one of those things where most of that has been from past entrepreneurs were really excited, like people who have founded companies in the past were really excited about the blockchain or Bitcoin. And then they go and they get some traction. they're able to prove what their theory was was correct and so they get some more money because they're trusted in the venture ecosystem. I would say bubble like but I think in general pretty fair as far as the industry just because like if you make the assumption that Bitcoin and the blockchain will rule the world like paying the valuations that people are paying are perfectly reasonable”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I mean, the common phrase is, oh, I'm not interested in Bitcoin, but I really love the blockchain. And to me, they're completely... They're very integrated and they're very similar. One can't exist without the other because the Bitcoin system is the incentivized system to help the ledger stay in operation because the ledger is powered by all these computers called miners that are distributed all over the world. There's something like 200,000 people who are hooked up to this network, who are powering this huge transactional thing. Whenever they say that, I'm sort of thinking like, well, technically you do believe in Bitcoin if you're believing in the blockchain, but I understand what you're saying. You want to not deal with the current situation.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I think it's going to be something where you don't notice that all of a sudden every transaction you're doing is on top of the blockchain or by using Bitcoin's payment channels. I think more transactions are happening with it than people realize right now. And timeframe-wise, I think five years, you know, it's amazing how many people have cell phones now. We have 3.2 billion people who are hooked up to the internet now, or it might even be more than that now. All of those people have access to the internet and they might not have a very simple way of transacting money on the internet. And Bitcoin is a very simple way to get that to happen. Time-wise, I don't want to, I said five years, but I don't want to make a specific guess. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it takes shorter. I do see the tides rolling and in, and I'm still a true believer that it is probably one of the most”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You could tip people a small amount of money, and that isn't possible today with the current financial payment structure. The third thing is a story for emerging companies, emerging governments and countries. So Argentina assumes 30% inflation every year. And so they don't want to hold the Argentine peso. They can figure out with Bitcoin a way to hold US dollars or hold Bitcoin or hold some other different currency that doesn't lose the value. And so just a store of value for different inflationary economies is sort of a big deal also. So if you boil down everything in the Bitcoin ecosystem, it would fall under those brackets. If you boil everything into the blockchain ecosystem, it would be smart contracts, digital assets, and currency-based stuff. So that's everything, those are the value adds in the ecosystem.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “So, a lot of people would say it's regulation. I actually think regulation is good because it legitimizes it. Like every time the U.S. government makes a new rule about Bitcoin or the blockchain, more people get interested in it rather than shy away from it because it feels like it's more and more endorsed by the government. What's halting adoption, it's really being useful. Really, if you boil down with the usefulness of Bitcoin is right now, it's border to border transfer of money. It can be a third the cost and one fifth the time of sending money today with this new technology, which is really, really exciting. And so that's one of the major use cases that a lot of companies have been getting a lot of hype about. Microtransactions, so the ability to send small, tiny amounts of money rather than liking a post on Facebook.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, that's essentially what it is. So Bitcoin is the first application on the blockchain, and that application relates to currency. And the blockchain is this ledger of every transaction that has ever happened in that currency, but it doesn't only need to relate to Bitcoin. It can also relate to smart contracts. It can also relate to digital assets. You can transact anything in this new tool called the blockchain, and it's all encompassing. Bitcoin specifically is relating to the currency.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Oh yeah. Well, he's definitely hugely bought into a huge advocate of Bitcoin and the blockchain. I would say the difference between us is that he likes using the word Bitcoin more than blockchain. And I have recently converted it to using the word blockchain, even though I really just, I mean Bitcoin 90% of the time.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “In the blockchain Bitcoin space for about three years now. And we have watched as the entire industry has evolved to being much more mature, higher quality, like really great products, higher quality products. And everyone's really starting to, rather than the companies think, oh, it's cool to use Bitcoin or it's cool to use blockchain. They're actually applying this useful tool to solving real world problems, which is very exciting.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So, as an accelerator, we invest in future tech. And the industries that we choose to really throw our weight behind, I mean, they're a little crazy, but they have to be world changing industries. And so we've really decided and taken time to pick blockchain and virtual reality over the last couple years because I believe blockchain will fundamentally change the way everyone on the planet interacts with money. And it takes a lot of the friction out of all transactions, which is a very, very exciting thing. Not only currency-based transactions, but also contract-based and any transactions that happen throughout the world. It's a hugely time creation technology. And we're just really, really excited about it.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, so it's definitely we outwardly say blockchain and virtual reality, which blockchain basically means Bitcoin encompasses Bitcoin or FinTech that relate to the blockchain. And virtual reality. And so we've taken this methodology of verticalizing our industries. What we do really, really well at BooseVC is if you look at our value added, we instill companies with a network of investors and entrepreneurs in the heart of”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So it's a breakdown of venture capitalist hedge. I have like one or two hedge fund related people. A lot of just individuals who are, whether they're interested in future technology such as blockchain or virtual. Yeah, that sort of summarizes almost all of them.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I think it was about as fun as if you're raising as anyone else. It's not a very fun process. What I really do enjoy about fundraising is actually, if you think about it as getting to meet people, you end up getting to meet a lot of really interesting people all over the world. My specific one was a real grind. So it took me 12 months to raise my money. So from when I opened to raise money to close, it was like no back in 2013 to November 22nd, 2014. And I closed $6.6 million. I reached out to probably 3,000 investors. I ended up meeting with about 350 and I ended up closing with about 35 investors. And so it was about a rule of 10 for me to end up raising my fund. So it was a grind.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “It's an accelerator program, so we do two tribes a year, two sessions a year that are three months long, where we provide housing, office space, and we invest in the companies and we invest between 10 and $25,000 to 25 companies twice a year. So we do about 50 deals a year in this model where we provide housing and office space. Current fund, so I've raised two funds and the first one was smaller, but my current fund was about $6.6 million, and that'll invest in about 200 companies, 180 companies.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “First, where we're not going global, we're bringing people to the United States in order to train them in specific industries such as blockchain and virtual realities where our focuses have been. Just as a family, we really like helping people get to wherever they want to go and assisting sort of giving them the basic resources and just energy and legitimacy they need to be able to get to the next level. And it's been, yeah, it's just, I don't know, we like to really fun thing. We get to help people live their dream essentially, which is trying to change the world in some way. And so that sort of a fun thing.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. Each generation of sort of the Draper family, I would say, added a different flair to the venture model, whether it be like my grandpa and my great-grandpa were sort of first investors out on the West Coast around Stanford University. He tells a really fantastic story, by the way. His book, The Startup Game, is really good. He would like me to plug that. And then my grandpa was also the first venture fund to go to India with Draper International. He had a tendency to go where no one was looking. And then my dad was actually the first fund to, he created this Draper network, DFJ network, where they had smaller funds all over the world where they were able to actually see deal float from all over the world. And I'm really”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “About four years of being there and founded what ended up becoming, well, I wanted to be able to mentor companies in bulk and at that time that was called an accelerator, which was about three years ago. Yeah, since then BoostVC, we've run six tribes, we call them tribes. They're three-month programs. We provide housing office space and we invest in companies and we've invested about 120 companies.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Out of UCLA I found it a startup called Expert Financial, where we were trying to help later stage companies raise capital online, something like second market or shares post, where we were helping later stage companies trade private securities. Essentially, like over the course of four years, made every mistake known to man, private mistakes, hiring mistakes, firing mistakes, and fundraising mistakes. And I found that I had gained it and I learned from those mistakes and I gained a specific knowledge base that was able to help me help early stage startups come up with their ideas, build their products and raise capital. And I actually helped one of my friends come up with their idea, build the product and raise capital, and I found it very fulfilling. And so I realized I wanted to make that a bigger part of my career. And so I ended up leaving expert after.”

    2016-02-24 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source