I have noticed this week that a number of people have arrived at ephosting.com via a Google search for the phrase ‘"tim draper" is an idiot’. I should probably know who Tim Draper is but I confess that up to a moment ago, I didn’t have any idea who he was, and, while I’ve remedied the gap by looking him up on wikipedia (arguably not the most reliable place to get information given the tendency of the idle to vandalize wikipedia pages), and doing some additional research around the business blogosphere, I still don’t really know at this precise moment why people are calling him an idiot. Tim Draper is mentioned in an older post on this site that uses (with permission) an article by Ryan P Allis about "Motivation". In the article Allis talks about attending a private reception and meeting with Tim Draper. He credits Draper for impressing him with the following statement: "Give it that extra 10%. Everyone gives up at 90%, not realizing that the true benefits, the true gains come from that extra little effort, that extra ounce of proactive diligence, the writing of those thank you cards, the reading of that extra book each month, the calling on those last prospects, the preparation for your next day." Hardly sounds like the advice of an idiot; but Allis’s article is a few years old. So the question is, what has Tim Draper done recently that has people calling him an idiot? But before I looked into that, I thought it would be a good idea to first address the question of Tim Draper’s identity. So here, for those of you who have also failed to make it a priority to know who’s who in the world of money, investing, finance and big business, here’s what Wikipedia has available on the biography of Tim Draper.

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder of the global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He is third in a line of venture capitalists. His father, William Henry Draper III, founded the Draper & Johnson Investment Company in 1962, Sutter Hill in 1968, Draper International India in 1996, and Draper Richards in 2001, and his grandfather William Henry Draper Jr., the first Silicon Valley venture capitalist founded Draper, Gaither and Anderson in 1959.

Tim Draper is the 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.

He invested in and contributed to Skype (acquired by eBay), Baidu, Overture (acquired by Yahoo!), Parametric Technology, Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Tumbleweed Communications, PLX Technologies, Digidesign (acquired by Avid), Preview Travel (acquired by Travelocity), Four11 (acquired by Yahoo!), Combinet (acquired by Cisco), and Redgate (acquired by AOL), among others.

Mr. Draper launched the Draper Affiliate Network, an international network of early-stage venture capital funds with offices in 34 cities around the globe. He founded or co-founded Wasatch Ventures (Salt Lake City), Zone Ventures (LA), Draper Atlantic (Reston), Draper Triangle (Pittsburg), Timberline Ventures (Portland), DFJ EPlanet (global), Polaris Fund (Anchorage), Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham (NYC), DFJ Frontier (Sacramento and Santa Barbara), and DFJ Dragon (Shanghai).

As an advocate for entrepreneurs and free markets, Mr. Draper is regularly featured as a keynote speaker in entrepreneurial conferences throughout the world.

Mr. Draper is the course creator and Chairman of BizWorld, a 501c3 organization built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children.

Mr. Draper served on the California State Board of Education in 1998-9. He launched a statewide cyber-initiative on school choice for the California General Election in November of 2000.

He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Additional reads about Tim Draper

VC Tim Draper Reveals What He Looks for When Investing

DRAPER FISHER JURVETSON

On the Record: Tim Draper

Tim Draper IMs Meebo

VC Tim Draper: SOX ruined our business

Six degrees of Tim Draper

So, is Tim Draper an Idiot?

I won’t pretend to be qualified to speak on the subject of Tim Draper’s idiocy or lack thereof. Heck, 10 minutes ago I had no idea who he was, and I haven’t been able to find anything exactly precise that would answer the question of why people are calling him an idiot. Maybe it was something he said or something he did, a bad investment choice or some such thing. He’s credited with making a few of those, bad investment choices, and losing at least two-tenths of a billion as a result. These are numbers with which I certainly cannot identify, and I would be hard-pressed to call someone an idiot who can afford to take two-hundred million dollar risks while I still have to think twice about buying a $14 dollar pair of shoes.