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Timothy C. Draper
| Timothy Draper | |
 | |
| Basic facts | |
| Organization: | Draper Fisher Jurvetson |
| Role: | Founder |
Timothy C. Draper is the founder of the venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Draper Associates and a donor to California ballot proposition campaigns.[1]
Biography
Draper earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and his M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.[1]
Draper founded Draper Associates in July 1985, which was later joined by John Fisher and Steve Jurvetson to become Draper Fisher Jurvetson. DFJ's investments include Skype, Hotmail, Tesla, Baidu, Theranos, and Overture. In 1994, Draper founded a nonprofit called BizWorld, which aims to teach entrepreneurship and business to children.[2] Draper served on the California State Board of Education from 1998 to 1999.[2]
Draper said he "created viral marketing, a marketing method for exponentially spreading an electronic service from customer to customer, that was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail, Skype, and other applications."[2]
Work and activities
Ballot measure involvement
Three states initiative (2018)
On August 18, 2017, Tim Draper submitted a letter requesting a title and summary for the initiative. The attorney general's office issued ballot language on October 24, 2017, allowing proponents to begin collecting signatures. On December 21, 2017, the campaign reported collecting at least 25 percent of the required signatures. Proponents had until April 23, 2018, to file 365,880 valid signatures for the initiative to make the ballot.[3]
Tim Draper announced that more than 600,000 signatures had been collected as of April 11, 2018, and that signatures would be filed the following week. He said, "This is an unprecedented show of support on behalf of every corner of California to create three state governments that emphasize representation, responsiveness, reliability and regional identity."[4] Counties had until June 13, 2018, to complete a random sample of the filed signatures.
On June 12, 2018, the secretary of state's office reported that the initiative was eligible to appear on the ballot for November 6, 2018. The random sample of filed signatures estimated that 463,328 were valid. As 605,025 were filed, around 76.6 percent of signatures were valid.
"Six Californias" initiative (2014)
In December 2013, Draper filed language for the "Six Californias" Initiative. This initiative, if it had qualified for the ballot, would have called on the United States Congress to officially divide California into six separate states.[5] The measure did not appear on the ballot.
Donations
Below are contributions made by Draper to campaigns for past propositions that were on the ballot:
| Proposition | Year | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Proposition 38, School Vouchers | 2000 | $23,386,553 |
| Proposition 32, Paycheck Protection | 2012 | $100,000 |
Notable endorsements
This section displays endorsements this organization made in elections within Ballotpedia's coverage scope. Know of one we missed? Click here to let us know.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 LinkedIn, "Timothy Draper," accessed August 29, 2025
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Timothy Draper, "Bio," accessed August 29, 2025
- ↑ California Secretary of State, "Ballot Measures," accessed August 17, 2017
- ↑ PR Newswire, ""CAL 3" Initiative to Partition California Reaches Unprecedented Milestone," April 11, 2018
- ↑ Contra Costa Times, "Tech investor Tim Draper launches 'Six Californias' ballot measure to divide the Golden State," December 23, 2013
