Adam Draper

Adam Draper is a fourth-generation venture capitalist and the Founder and Managing Director of Boost VC, a pre-seed venture capital firm and accelerator based in San Mateo, California. He is the son of famed Bitcoin evangelist and venture capitalist Tim Draper (Draper Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson), the grandson of William Henry Draper III (a venture capital pioneer and former head of the United Nations Development Programme and the Export-Import Bank under President Nixon), and the great-grandson of William Henry Draper Jr. (founder of Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first West Coast VC firms). His aunt is actress Polly Draper. The Draper family is widely regarded as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital dynasties.

Adam graduated from UCLA in 2009 with a degree in English. During his senior year, he co-founded Xpert Financial, a secondary marketplace for private securities that aimed to create a private stock exchange enabling liquidity for private companies. The startup operated in a heavily regulated market and spent 18 months obtaining a broker-dealer license. After roughly three years at Xpert Financial, Adam left in late 2012 and began angel investing, backing early-stage companies including Coinbase, PlanGrid, Practice Fusion, Amplitude, and Earnest. This experience led him to create Boost Funder, a platform matching early-stage companies with investors, which subsequently pivoted into what is now Boost VC.

Since founding Boost VC in 2012 alongside co-founder Brayton Williams, Adam has built the firm into one of the most prolific pre-seed investors in deep tech. The firm has invested in over 400 startups across 12+ years and four funds. In September 2025, Boost VC closed its fourth fund at $87,654,321 (an intentionally sequenced number), backed primarily by family offices and high-net-worth individuals, including members of the Draper family. The firm's first two funds (2013 and 2016) have delivered DPI of 2.15x and 4.35x respectively.

Boost VC's tagline is "Backing the impossible." Adam describes the firm's mandate as investing "at the peak of human endeavor" -- space, crypto, biotech, and sci-fi technology. The only stated requirement for a company to receive investment is that it must have the potential to "make 1 billion lives better." Boost VC positions itself as a generalist deep-tech investor willing to take bets that other investors will not.

Core Sectors:

Investment Approach:

• Aerospace / Space (satellites, launch, orbital logistics)
• Nuclear Energy
• Crypto / Blockchain / Web3
• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
• Bio / Health (synthetic biology, longevity, neuroscience)
• Robotics
• Climate / Energy
• Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality
• Defense
• Oceans
• Materials Science
• Leads pre-seed rounds with a standardized $500K check
• Invests in 70+ startups per year (averaging roughly one deal per week)
• Approximately 90% of deals are referred by trusted sources
• Speed is emphasized as a competitive advantage in capital deployment
• The firm runs an accelerator program with demo days and founder summits