By
Chimamanda U. Martha
January 31st, 2024
Adam Draper has recently selected 24 startups for its collection of new bitcoin businesses, which enlarged its total portfolio to 50 companies.
Adam Draper, founder and CEO of Boost VC, a start up accelerator, doesn’t seem to worry about bitcoin’s drop of value over the past several months as well as many bitcoin entrepreneurs. Indeed, he remains so vigorous about the digital currency, that Boost VC has recently greeted its fifth group of startups — 24 in this tribe, a number that almost doubles the total number of startups the company has cherished.
“While some people might have backed off of bitcoin a little bit, we doubled down,” Draper told a representative of San Francisco Business Times by phone. “We just invested in twice as many companies as anyone has ever invested in bitcoin. We broke our own record,” added Draper.
The companies chosen for Boost’s tribe, go through a certain passage. For three months, founders from the 24 startups live and work together with their advisors in housing just around the corner from Boost’s offices in San Mateo. They attend weekly all-team meetings and get access to legal counsel.
In March, 2014, Draper told CoinDesk that Boost VC planned to help the growths of bitcoin industry by accelerating 100 bitcoin companies:
“We are actually, over the next three years, going to be accelerating 200 companies. And 100 of those are going to be bitcoin companies. That’s our big stake in the ground.”
Draper’s idea to help startups with his Boost VC does involve risk, as the industry is still in its developing stage and the uncertainty surrounding future regulations can have a negative impact on the companies. However, seems like Draper does not have fears to take up risks as he has a good example of his father’s company DFJ, that was the first firm to “only back Internet companies.”
Even though Draper’s father Tim Draper was a pioneering venture investor in the early years of the Internet, Draper said that starting-up a company today is different than it was years ago:
“It’s crazy how much things have changed in such a short amount of time. If you want to start a business today, all you need is $80, a bank account and some code.”
With Boost’s decision to accelerate 100 bitcoin startups, Draper said that he is aware of the influence he and his company have:
“I do feel like an ambassador for the community, in a way. I’ve never been so public about supporting something as I have been with bitcoin, and I’m grateful to be able to help grow the industry.”
Though Draper’s peers in venture capital may consider that Boost’s interest in bitcoin is “crazy”, he wouldn’t change anything:
“My job wouldn’t be possible without all of the crazy and talented entrepreneurs who are putting all of their hard work into developing new products and services around bitcoin’s technology.”
