"The inspiration that helped rocket Hotmail into orbit
occurred at the second meeting between Bhatia, Smith, and the venture capitalists.
DFJ's Draper suggested that every outgoing e-mail carry an advertising message
promoting the service."- Asset Management: The New Economy -
July/August 1999
"Like many Silicon Valley stories these days, it has a happy ending --
deliriously happy for some. The venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson
parlayed two Web-based email companies into a half-billion dollar jackpot." - "Free
Mail Exposion," Red Herring, June 1998
"DFJ has done well funding e-mail start-ups; the firm's annual Cyberneticool
Schmoozefest III shindig helped introduce Hotmail Corp to Microsoft Corp. and
Four11 Corp. to Yahoo!" - Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1998
"Sabeer refuses to give the credit to anything other than the culture
of the Valley itself: 'Only in Silicon Valley could two twenty-seven-year-old
guys get three hundred thousand dollars from men they had just met. Two twenty-seven-year-old
guys who had no experience with consumer products, who had never started a
company, who had never managed anybody, who had no experience even in software
- Jack and I were hardware engineers. All we had was the idea. We didn't demo
proof-of-concept software or a prototype or even a graphic printed on a piece
of paper. I just sketched on Steve Jurvetson's whiteboard. Nowhere in the world
could this happen but here.'" - Po Bronson's Book, Nudist on
the Night Shift, 1999
"When it rains, it pours. The same can be said of the recent successes
of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which funded two free email
companies, Four11 and Hotmail, that recently were acquired by notable tech
companies. Within three months, theVC firm watched the two start-ups become
acquisition candidates for search company Yahoo and software giant Microsoft,
respectively. Industry watchers say that it is more than a mere coincidence
that the firm has had two successes in selling the similar companies within
such a short period of time... Kirk Walden, a national director at Price Waterhouse,
said the last time a venture capital firm had such a profitable run was
when Sevin Rosen was the investor in both Compaq, which went public, and Lotus,
which was acquired by IBM. 'It is very unusual that Draper's deals are
that close together. There is some luck involved, but it goes beyond that.
They have made some really good bets,' Walden said." - C|net
News.Com, January 6, 1998
Hotmail
"Add another name to the get-rich-quick legends of the Internet. Microsoft
Corp. has agreed to buy Hotmail Corp. Not bad, for a red-hot, privately held
Web e-mail company launched 1 1/2 years ago... So on the last day of 1997 Microsoft
may have announced its largest acquisition of the year, potentially topping
the $425 million acquisition of WebTV" - MSNBC, January 2, 1998
"The award for Internet marketing buzzword of the year goes to 'viral
marketing'. It gained prominence when Microsoft spent more than $400 million
to acquire HotMail in late 1997. HotMail's viral marketing strategy used the
e-mail signature used in tens of millions of e-mails sent daily by its users
to promote the free service. This technique lifted HotMail's user base from
3 million two months after launching to 10 million at the end of 1997. The
company finished 1998 with more than 30 million users, a feat that simply has
no equal in Net history."- Iconocast, December 16, 1998
"Jurvetson remembers: Sabeer had hallucinogenic optimism. He had an unquenchable
sense of destiny. But he was right. He grew the subscriber base faster than
any company in the history of the world.".....
"Several times, Microsoft's negotiators stormed out. Even with the talks
secret, Hotmail's employees twice pressured Sabeer to accept the most recent
offer....
"But Sabeer wasn't psychologically alone - his backers and colleagues kept
the faith. VC Steve Jurvetson joked with Sabeer, 'You don't have to sell now.
Why don't you wait until you're big enough to buy Microsoft, rather than them
buying you.".....
"A year later that price ($400 million) looks cheap, particularly considering
that Hotmail has more than tripled in size since it was purchased."- Wired,
December 1998
"Much of Hotmail's growth may be attributable to a marketing suggestion
from DFJ that Hotmail include a line at the bottom of each email message that
would direct the recipient to the free email services offered at Hotmail's
site... The result of this simple marketing device was an explosion of Hotmail's
subscriber roster." - Red Herring, June 1998
"'Jurvetson had the vision to see how the Internet would pan out,' says
Sabeer Bhatia, cofounder of Hotmail. 'He's definitely a VC and not just a fund
manager.' Translation: Jurvetson invests at the idea level, building the team
and strategizing. He doesn't just hand out money and wait for its return. " - POV
Magazine, September 1998
"Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley,
famous for funding Hotmail, one of the most successful startups in history." - Strategos
Institute Newsletter, July 1998
"'Silicon Valley is a meritocracy,' says Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple
Computer Inc. 'It doesn't matter what you wear. It doesn't matter how old you
are. What matters is how smart you are.' That worked to the advantage of two
entrepreneur-wannabes then at FirePower Systems. The pair went to see venture
capitalist Steve Jurvetson at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. But the investor was
unimpressed by their idea for database software for the Net. As they were packing
up to leave, he asked: 'Do you have any other ideas?' Sabeer Bhatia, one of
the engineers, said they'd noodled over a scheme to offer free, advertising-supported
E-mail over the Web. A week and a half later, the venture capitalists ponied
up $300,000 (no business plan required), and Hotmail was born."- Business
Week, August 25, 1997
"Sabeer Bhatia: We had our fair share of hard times. Finally we
found a venture capitalist who was a true venture capitalist who would venture
out and risk the money on two young people with a dream."- WWWiz
Magazine, August 1997
"Microsoft was likely focusing on reach with its acquisition of Hotmail.'Microsoft
was going after the clear leader in the space,' said Tim Draper, managing director
of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which had invested in both
Four11 and Hotmail. 'They were looking at what the business might be worth
in the future, not so much what it was now.'"- Internet World,
March 23, 1998
"Back in 1996, Hotmail was little more than a great idea. Raising capital
was an impossible task. Twenty venture capital firms turned them down. CNBC: You
were the 21st venture capital firm that they came to? Jurvetson: You
know, that's interesting. They forgot to mention that in the first meeting. CNBC: Steve
Jurvetson says their naivete is what hooked him on Hotmail, investing $300
thousand in seed money. Jurvetson: That was part of their charm - their
sense of unbridled optimism - that they would conquer the world, in fact, more
than conquer the world, that they would grow more quickly than any company
in history."- TV transcript of CNBC "Business Center" interview,
February 4, 1998
"Ten to Watch in the Decades Ahead: Steve Jurvetson. He's become
known as the guy that built Hotmail; the venture capitalist who teased the
idea out of its inventors, who where then focused on another project, and then
sat on the start-up company's board from inception to acquisition by Microsoft...
His rise is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend."- San Francisco Chronicle
and SF Examiner, March 15, 1998
"'[Hotmail's] idea immediately clicked with us,' said Mr. Jurvetson.
'We have some 32 different Internet-related investments, and we're firm believers
in e-mail as the killer application for the Internet...' In just a little more
than a year, Draper Fisher Jurvetson has led Hotmail through five rounds of
financing and has seen the Sunnyvale-based company become the second largest
provider of e-mail on the Internet... 'No other publishing company in the entire
Internet space has grown as fast, in terms of number of subscribers, as Hotmail,'
said Mr. Jurvetson. 'We're very excited about what Hotmail is up to...' Observers
note that even if Hotmail only captures a small fraction of the 135 million
e-mail accounts worldwide, the company should continue to amass revenues at
an eye-popping rate."- San Jose Business Journal, August 31, 1997
"Free email service Hotmail is a hot commodity. As the company's subscriber
base expands at warp speed, investment banks and partners are lining up at
its door. Last Friday, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm, officially
offered the company an additional round of financing. Hotmail could go with
partnerships, investment rounds, or a merger or acquisition, said Steve Jurvetson,
partner and managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which has made four
previous investments in Hotmail. But he noted: 'We want Hotmail to grow as
an independent entity. From our perspective, we are not eager to sell shares.
The company is a very valuable asset.'"- CNet, October 13, 1997
"Board member Steve Jurvetson, a partner in venture capital firm Draper
Fisher Jurvetson, said Hotmail has received offers for bothcommercial and financial
deals, and that it was natural for it to seek strategic partners. 'They have
been approached by about every type of financial investor you can imagine,'
he said, adding this ranged from venture firms and investment bankers eager
to do deals to media and technology companies.'"- CNN.com, October
19, 1997
Four11
"Yahoo said it will pay $94 million in stock for Four11 corp., a Menlo
Park provider of free e-mail and address listings. In what amounted to a daylong
media blitz...the biggest news was the acquisition of Four11." - SF
Chronicle, front page, October 9, 1997
"Four11, the Internet's 'white pages' found a champion in Mr. Jurvetson.
Having picked up Ultimate Frisbee at Stanford, Mr. Jurvetson welcomed an invitation
to play with Four11's management, an avid group of Frisbee enthusiasts. In
fact, the terms of the funding agreement for the company were signed just off
the field. It's not hard to see how Mr Jurvetson - affable, quick talking,
informal, but serious - would do something like that."- Cover
Article, VC Journal, July 1997
