52 pitches in 52 minutes. All below 40 degrees. I've sat through thousands of pitches over 40 years inside conference rooms, coffee shops, Zoom calls, and pretty much any venue you could think of. The ones that stick out are the ones where a founder is so convicted they'll pitch through anything. So… I took 52 pitches in 52 minutes sitting in an ice bath at below 40 degrees. What I was watching for was the founder. How do they carry themselves when conditions are uncomfortable? When the circumstances aren't ideal and the room (or in this case, the water) is working against them? Pitching through stress is practice for everything that comes after. For the moments, where inevitably, everything is harder than they thought it would be. Great founders push through it all to find success, and that's why founders are heroes. I'm not a frequent cold plunger, but it was a fun experience! Next time, we need the Guinness Book of World Records there. Have an idea you want me to hear? Meet me in the ice bath. 🧊 Thanks to Business Insider for covering:

I loved my conversation with Ilana Golan on The Leap Academy Podcast! I joined Ilana and broke down how to spot world-changing ideas before they make sense, why most people miss their biggest opportunities, and how listening to your gut can be more powerful than logic alone. I shared the lessons behind massive wins like Hotmail, painful misses like Netflix, and the mindset required to navigate uncertainty, fear, and reinvention. Listen here:

Get paid → earn yield → withdraw in fiat or crypto. Rise Earn is live. Contractors & employees can now put their @rise_pay balance to work — redeemable anytime, zero DeFi complexity. Your money shouldn't sit still while you wait to withdraw.

Loved this article from Wala Kasmi at ClassX. She argues that startup investment decisions are driven more from a psychological lens rather than a logical one. Sometimes founders with no revenue raise millions while some with traction struggle. I appreciate her sharing some of my thoughts around investment philosophy. Worth a read if you have time.

While @websummit was again a well-oiled machine for technology and networking, Vancouver, BC, Canada has become a city of drug addicts and vagrants as far as the eye can see. The once booming and gorgeous metropolis has taken socialist policies to such an extreme that people now don't own the property they thought they did (ancestors of the native tribes do), where the average worker earns $60k Canadian (net $35k), while the homeless get $80k of value tax free with free needles, drugs (yes, drugs) and cell phones. Note that the public employees get ($100k) far more than the taxpayer who they work for. Human incentives are everything. They are backwards in BC.

Congrats to the @ConsensusNLP team on their Series B! 2.5 million researchers are using their AI to accelerate their work. The researchers who cure the next disease, solve the next energy crisis, make the next breakthrough are working right now and Consensus puts better tools in their hands today!

I've always been a spreadsheet geek. I can do most anything with a spreadsheet, but databases eluded me. Then I met George Fraser. He told me he could look at data as a conglomeration of spreadsheets and that those spreadsheets could be alive with streaming data. I was intrigued. I was Fivetran's largest angel investor. Now George has built Fivetran into the standard for companies to access and integrate reliable, dynamic, secure data. The business intelligence Fivetran has provided to thousands of customers is incalculable. George made databases make sense to a spreadsheet geek. The company is now the #1# cloud-based data movement platform.

Having met all of the viable candidates, and after a lot of soul searching, I came to the conclusion that @SteveHiltonx is the best option to grow California as Governor. I am endorsing Steve with great enthusiasm.

WOW... just WOW! As you all know, I love BIG ideas. When @BaijuBhatt first came to me about Robinhood, I thought it was extraordinary that he wanted to take on Wall Street. Now he wants to conquer AI, Space, and Energy...! Well, if anyone is going to do this, I am betting on THIS guy! I am proud to be in the first round of investments in both of your startups. Go get'em @CowboySpaceCorp

We just wrapped Draper Summit 2026 at Half Moon Bay. Every year we host this reunion of people who are changing the world. We heard from some of the top leaders today including: Baiju Bhatt, Founder of Robinhood → Aetherflux (this man does not slow down) Rosie Rios, former Treasurer of the United States. Rob Kaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs. Sal Khan, who is revolutionizing how every human on Earth learns. The conversations were so futuristic, you would have to hear it from our entrepreneurs to believe it. HexemBio is rejuvenating all your blood cells. There were stealth companies regenerating limbs via bioelectricity, replacing brain cells, and rethinking human reproduction entirely via artificial wombs. Muse Bio launched the world's first topical rejuvenative serum made from menstrual blood stem cells - promoting scarless healing and glowing skin. Autolane is building the orchestration layer the autonomous world needs to function. Feltsense is building founder agents that source ideas, build product, and go to market without a human in the loop (they replicated the entire YC batch a few weeks ago). Venus Aerospace is developing the most efficient rocket engine ever built. Gemma Robotics sent a robot to autonomously apply professional make up - airbrushed foundation, contour, etc. The results were fantastic. And we live taped Meet the Drapers Silicon Valley! You'll have to tune in to see the winner… Another summit in the books, for the books. The greatest takeaway about what made Draper summit successful: We all were able to spend time in a beautiful location, learning about frontier tech, getting to know each other deeply, and creating real, meaningful friendships while simply having a lot of fun. At Draper, we know that VC runs on relationships that compound over decades. We are here to build trust with you as you build generational companies. Thank you to all our LPs, founders, ecosystem members, co-investors, and of course the relentless Draper team for coming and making this all possible. Let me know in the comments if you should come next year. Hope to see you there.

Draper Summit 2026 at Half Moon Bay is a wrap! Every year this event reminds me why I love what we do. One part frontier thesis, one part startup showcase, one part celebration of the founders who have been putting in the work all year. And one part just letting loose with people you genuinely like. 📣 This year we heard from: - @BaijuBhatt, founder and former CEO of @RobinhoodApp, Current Founder / CEO of Aetherflux - @RosieRios, former Treasurer of the United States - @RobSKaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs - @salkhanacademy, Founder of Khan Academy The conversations were insane.

Mike Santullo and Larry Drebes are two of my favorite entrepreneurs ever. Every time I came to a board meeting, Mike and Larry would have a new software product or feature to demo. The energy in their company was palpable. They cold-called me on a Monday, we met that week, and had a term sheet the following Thursday. I felt like I needed to move as fast as they did. Four11 started as a lookup service for business websites. Then they met the Hotmail founders at a DFJ Schmoozefest and learned about web-based email and viral marketing. So they decided to do it themselves. They launched RocketMail. Sold it to Yahoo. The product is now called Yahoo Mail. It has 200+ million users today. The lesson is obvious. Speed matters. Energy matters.

Bill Gross was a genius out of Caltech. When we met Bill, he explained how he was going to create the search tool for commerce. We were so impressed with his idea that we agreed to fund him. The idea was a search engine called GoTo with bidded listings. Bill changed the face of internet advertising forever. The genius was that advertisers would pay for search terms. GoTo would charge different prices for different terms based on demand. This was the beginning of paid search. Before Bill, no search engine had any profitable business model. This innovation became instrumental to the success of Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, and all the other paid search engines. GoTo later rebranded as Overture and acquired other search engines. In 2003, Yahoo bought Overture for $1.6 billion. The worldwide paid search industry is now estimated to be over $300 billion. Paid search is common sense now. Back then, it was a stroke of genius from Bill.

We are proud to double down on our seed investment in Scout by leading their $100M series A. Colby and Collin are world-class entrepreneurs and technologists. Between seed and Series A, Scout’s vision language and action (VLA) model was deployed in the field by their government and commercial customers. Freedom is not free. Edge intelligence is the future, and its applications range from industrial security, deterrent for global conflicts, and cyber security. With Scout, the world is a safer and better place for everyone.

This is well written, clear, and will catch you up on all things Bitcoin. Highly recommended reading for anyone who is Bitcoincurious, or even for those who are Maxxies out there. @TonyLuh

Batch 3 already. We continue to invest in the brightest founders building the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Join us live at 11 AM EST to see what these amazing teams have been working on @lxdev_ @OpenAgents @helios_finance @Resolvr_io @CharmsDev @PyrusFinancial