Today I woke up to a nice surprise. Tim Draper, our earliest investor and greatest mentor, tweeted about us:
It has been three years since one of the most pivotal moments of my life happened, and Tim Draper is directly responsible for it.
I am just an average Latin American guy. I was working at Google in Brazil in early 2013, but was unhappy because I was not living my entrepreneurial dream. So, I left the company with the objective of making a MBA in the US to have access to the network and opportunities there. I invested all my time and money in test preparations and application and, ultimately, did not accomplish my dream because of lack of access to credit.
I was at rock bottom. But then I saw a blog post about Tim Draper and the university he had created, Draper University. I applied for it and got accepted.
Draper University was my Jedi Academy, my Xavier School for gifted students. There, I found the inspiration, the alumni network, the access to world class contacts and the capital to get started as an international founder.
When I got there, I did not have money to buy 3 meals a day. But, by the end of the program, 7 weeks later, I was one of the 3 out of 34 in the class who got investment from Tim Draper himself.
Note: Tim Draper and I, with my super hero costume, at the graduation day, on Fall 2014.
And Tim never failed to give me an advice, to introduce me to people he knew, to endorse us to prospective investors and to support us in our mission for Universal Access to Credit.
You may know Tim Draper as the eccentric billionaire investor who invested in Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, Baidu, SpaceX, who bought 30,000 Bitcoins before it was cool and who is one of the earliest supporters of the blockchain technology. But he is more than that.
- He is one of the kindest people I know. He knows every one of his students by name and businesses they created.
- His favorite words are “Gusto” and “Enthusiasm”.
- He is writing a book. Here is its first chapter
- He created a song called “The Riskmaster” dedicated to all entrepreneurs, but it kind of became his nickname and theme song.
- His personal mission is to spread entrepreneurship around the world, that is why he created Draper University. Which, despite only five years of existence has already some expressive accomplishments:
I am just one of his 700 alumni from Draper University, and our prospective ICO, Swapy Network is just one of the many he invested on. But I can safely say that Tim was one of the people which had the greatest impacts on my life.
While others saw me as a serial failure who could not hold a job because he would disagree with everyone, Tim Draper saw me as an experienced entrepreneur who would fight for his opinions.
While others saw our mission of Universal Access to Credit as a pipe dream, Tim Draper saw as worthy goal whose time has come.
While others thought that doing an ICO to create a digital financial identity and give people control of their own financial information was a crazy idea, Tim Draper invested more capital to make it happen.
So, I would like to express my gratitude to Tim at this moment. Thank you for creating Draper University and for being awesome. You changed my life and countless others, all around the world.
The Swapy Network team and I will make you proud!