Tim Draper singing The RiskMaster

So I'm sitting watching the end of today's VC competition, been a fantastic day - met a ton of contacts, had some really interesting discussions.

They are just about to announce the winners and Tim Draper is up giving the summary speech on his thoughts and why competitions like this are so important to stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit and how much things have changed since he did his MBA in the 70's.

He started making comments about how countries are starting to realise that their most precious assets are the entrepreneurs and that the USA needs to wake up and fight to keep more of them in the country as if they don't fight these resources will slip away (a line of thinking that I've been preaching for a while and strongly believe in - if a competing country attracts expats to go work overseas for tax or growth or whatever other reason....this is a big negative for their home country - you either have to fight to keep these highly mobile resources or your will lose them - it's not like oil or coal that will always be there, these resources can leave in a matter of years and be very hard to get back....... - we'll leave the rest of this post for another time).

So anyway I'm thinking wow these comments are really powerful stuff and whip out my still photo camera that records barely adequate but acceptable video and start to record thinking it's just going to be for my own benefit to watch later.......

Watch the video :)


Now before you read any further understand that this man has a net worth of over a Billion dollars (thats 'B' for Billion). He is one of the smartest most connected VC's in the world. He has funded more successful startups than you will ever even hear about and is a super visionary.

Basically the story is that he was at a charity auction where he won the rights for a very famous guitarist to write some music for the lyrics he wrote.

So he wrote a song called "The RiskMaster". I had to edit it down to just the start and finish of the song to get you tube to fit it but hey if he wants to sing it - then go right ahead, if that is what makes him the superstar venture capitalist that he is then I think we all should grow some balls and sing in front of a hall of people.

Anyone that can say he funded Hotmail, Skype and half a dozen other multi billion dollar companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Draper can sing wherever he likes (and the crowd loved it).

I'd say Tim is my new hero but personally I'd prefer to be one of the startups he funds than a VC - and I'm sticking with Thor from the other day for a little bit longer.


Cheers,
Dean