Steve Jurvetson

Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Managing Director

Press quality photos

Companies

Biography

Steve Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading venture capital firm with affiliate offices around the world. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail (MSFT), Interwoven (IWOV), Kana (KANA), and NeoPhotonics (NPTN). He also led the firm's investments in other companies which were then acquired for $12 billion in aggregate. Current Board positions include SpaceX, Synthetic Genomics, and Tesla Motors (TSLA). Previously, Steve was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research (TEM atomic imaging of GaAs), and computer design at HP's PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and Mostek. He has also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT Software. As a Consultant with Bain & Company, Steve developed executive marketing, sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of companies in the software, networking and semiconductor industries. At Stanford University, he finished his BSEE in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class, as the Henry Ford Scholar. Steve also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. He received his MBA from the Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of SRI International, STVP, and the Stanford Engineering Venture Fund and is Co-Chair of the NanoBusiness Alliance. He was honored as "The Valley's Sharpest VC" on the cover of Business 2.0 and chosen by the SF Chronicle and SF Examiner as one of "the ten people expected to have the greatest impact on the Bay Area in the early part of the 21st Century." He was profiled in the New York Times Magazine and featured on the covers of Worth, Red Herring, and Fortune magazines. Steve was chosen by Forbes as one of "Tech's Best Venture Investors", by the VC Journal as one of the "Ten Most Influential VCs", and by Fortune as part of their "Brain Trust of Top Ten Minds." In 2005, Steve was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and a Distinguished Alumnus by St. Mark's, where he was the 2010 Commencement Speaker.

ADDITIONAL PRESS QUALITY PHOTOS OF STEVE JURVETSON

Email: SteveJ@boxbe.com

Press Quotes:

"Steve Jurvetson, the venture capitalist and innovator who has focused recently on the idea of clean tech investing, talks about what he hopes will be a "biological renanissance" - a new era in which college students, instead of becoming doctors, might instead be focus on "bio-derived or bio-inspired" solutions to our looming energy and environmental problems. There are going to be a lot of jobs there, too." The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

"There aren't many investors as sharp, quick or multi-disciplinary as Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His firm is a leading venture capital firm with affiliate offices around the world and one of the most active energy and clean-tech investors." - Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report, February 2009

"Steve Jurvetson's talent for spotting disruptive technologies is serving him well amid venture capital's current resurgence." - Conde Nast, November 2, 2007 (read more)

"A science whiz and all-round polymath, the young Mr Jurvetson flew through his undergraduate engineering degree at Stanford University in two-and-a-half years, finishing top of his class."
- Financial Times, March 29, 2005

"You'd be hard-pressed to find a more influential group of investors than those selected by our reader survey. Selected as number 1: Steve Jurvetson."
- Optimize Magazine, Power Issue cover story, October 2004

Top Five Business Geeks on the WIRED Top 100 Geeks Power Grid (August 2004):

1. Steve Jurvetson
2. John Chambers
3. Carly Fiorina
4. Meg Whitman
5. Michael Eisner

- Wired, August 2004

Steve Jurvetson, winner of the 2004 World Technology Award for Finance (read more)

"Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson is known for his knowledge, visionary zeal, outspoken support and willingness to invest in small tech. Unlike many investors, Jurvetson takes an active role as an industry proponent, speaking at conferences and authoring articles."
- Small Times, 11/10/03 (nanotech industry magazine)

"If you want to know where nanotech investing is headed, look no further than Jurvetson. His voice has carried through industry conferences, television appearances and university labs. And he's not just talk: he was one of the first non-corporate investors to invest in the sector... With a wide net and a sea of followers, Jurvetson's evangelic drive into nanotech is risky for both him and DFJ... If he's right and nanotech will fuel the next wave of innovation, he may be crowned the patron saint of tiny technology."
- VC Journal Cover Story, 02/02

"When the Internet burst on the scene, we turned to today's speaker to clue us in. Even then, Steve Jurvetson was urging us to think across disciplines, which he's done in becoming perhaps the leading investor in nanotech companies."
- Merrill Lynch Industry Report, 2/10/04

"President Bush, who sat in the Oval Office flanked by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson along with industry executives and a host of other nanotechnology supporters, sparked a huge frenzy last week when he signed off on the $3.7 billion National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI)."
- Private Equity Week, 12/8/03

"This level of financial attention to an emerging market is usually a sign that something big is afoot. The reality is that much of this investment is being made by only a handful of VCs... Jurvetson estimates one-third of future investments will go toward nanotech. There is something enthralling about a major VC embarking on a campaign to create an industry."
- WIRED, August 2004

"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

"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, March 15, 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

"Like many professors, I think about hard questions by teaching a class. So I asked a local genius and polymath Steve Jurvetson, to help frame a course around the challenges raised by Bill Joy."
- Larry Lessig, WIRED, April 2004

"Steve Jurvetson's firm, Redwood City, Calif.-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has invested in 16 - count 'em, 16 - nanotech companies, more than any other venture capital firm on the face of the earth."
- Small Times, 11/03

"DFJ's Steve Jurvetson has become such a fixture at conferences that he often gets introduced as 'Mr. Nanotech'."
- Forbes 6/03

"Steve Jurvetson is an investment manager on the vanguard of bets on nanotechnology startups...Jurvetson's firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is recognized as one of the foremost venture capital units investing in nanotech startups."
- San Francisco Chronicle, 2/1/04

"Steve Jurvetson first rose to venture capital prominence when his investment in Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft for more than $400 million. Today the Silicon Valley-based VC has become one of the nanotech's leading advocates and investors. Steve is known for being one of the earliest advocates of nanotech investing. Experts say: "He's dragging millions of dollars of VC into nanotech companies that wouldn't otherwise have gone into this space."
- Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, 3/04 (Top 10 Nanotech Power Elite)

"Among the first investors to pursue small tech, Jurvetson helped legitimize nano in the valley."
- Small Tech Evangelists, Small Times Best of Small Tech Awards, December 2002

"Steve Jurvetson is one of the hottest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. For Jurvetson has what every entrepreneur seeking venture capital backing in Silicon Valley wants: a phenomenal reputation, access to oodles of capital, a network of contacts-to-die for and, perhaps most important of all, boundless enthusiasm for the right idea."
- Real Business, November, 2000

"The Internet's top players constitute a new new establishment-- we've named it the eEstablishment and picked out 50 charter members. These are the people spearheading the longest economic expansion in American history... The son of Estonian immigrants, Jurvetson saved money by racing through Stanford in two and a half years -- and still graduated first in his class. He went on to design chips for Hewlett Packard, write software in nine computer languages, work for Steve Jobs, and become the youngest partner at one of the hottest venture capital firms, which backed hits like Hotmail and GoTo.com. He's already a legend in Silicon Valley: supersmart and technically savvy like John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, but enviably young, outgoing, and mediagenic..."
- The eEstablishment 50: The Kings and Queens of eCommerce, Vanity Fair cover, May 2000

"Steve Jurvetson - Estonia's gift to Internet-companies. Steve Jurvetson is one of the hottest names in Silicon Valley. Whenever CNN or the New York Times wants to interview venture capitalists of the West Coast they go to Draper Fisher Jurvetson."
- Bisnes.fi March 2000, Cover: "Piilaakson tahtisjoittaja Steve Jurvetson." translated from Finnish

"'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

Top Blog Picks Blog: The J Curve
Who writes it: Steve Jurvetson, managing director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Why you should read it: Whether or not you agree with Jurvetson's nanotech evangelism, his intelligent, if sometimes abstruse, comments on everything from genomics to the importance of a childlike mind are a nice reprieve from the usual blogosphere back scratching. If only he'd post more often. - Fast Company, 3/05

Steve Jurvetson of venture capital group Draper Fisher Jurvetson updates this blog with commentary on what is going on at the cutting edge of technology. In particular, he explores the intersection between computation, biotech and nanotechnology and tries to piece together this puzzle in real time when determining where the next great investment boom might come from. Sometimes he is so over the top it is funny... Go for it, J!" - Financial Times, 2/2/05