Here at Xconomy, we know something about the great investor-entrepreneur relationships that are often behind the best companies: not only are we a startup ourselves, we write about the venture capital and startup scene every day. And as you may have heard, together with the National Venture Capital Association and the MIT Museum, we are also planning a fantastic event in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium on April 6 that will honor the legacy of great investor-entrepreneur partnerships—VC65: Celebrating the 65th Anniversary of Venture Capital in America.
But if you stack our knowledge up against that of Bill Draper…well, let’s just not go there. Draper is the legendary venture capitalist who founded Sutter Hill Ventures and later his current firm, Draper Richards. Along the way he has backed scores of successful companies, including Yahoo, Baidu, Skype, Hotmail, and OpenTable, to name a few more recent investments.
Now, we are pleased to announce another great partnership of sorts—between Bill Draper and Xconomy. Draper, who serves on the Founders Circle planning group for VC65, has just donated 50 copies of his acclaimed new book, The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs. These will go to the next 50 people who buy a non-student ticket for VC65.
So act now to get your ticket. Bill isn’t able to make the event, but his son, Tim, who is co-founder of another prominent venture firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will be one of our VC65 speakers. He wrote the afterword to his father’s book (the forward is from Eric Schmidt of Google), and he will be on hand during the break to tell you more about the book and sign copies if you’d like.
You can read more about Bill Draper’s book here on Amazon. But let me just quote from one reviewer, Brad Feld, a not unknown VC himself:
“Bill Draper (officially William H. Draper III) has written a gem called The Startup Game. It’s a mix of practitioner stories with some autobiography mixed in…Draper talks about the early days of venture capital, the creation and evolution of the industry, and many of the early players whose names are well known to any VC insider. Along the way he tells stories about companies he’s funded (or missed funding) and generally teaches at least one lesson in each story.”
A lot more lessons will be brought forward at VC65, where many of the world’s top venture capitalists and some leading entrepreneurs will be sharing their insights: Greylock’s Henry McCance, Peter Brooke of Advent International, Venrock’s Bryan Roberts, MIT’s Bob Langer, Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of Accel, and Terry McGuire and Bob Metcalfe from Polaris are some of the speakers.
You can see the rest of the lineup and get your tickets here. Act fast, and your copy of The Startup Game will be waiting for you at VC65. (You must be present to get it, otherwise we will give it to someone else.) I hope to see you there.
