steve jurvetson

Riding in a Tesla Model S with Steve Jurvetson

Steve Jurvetson says electric vehicles are undoubtedly the cars of the future. Not too surprising, given that his VC firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, was an early investor in electric vehicle company Tesla Motors. But to really get an idea of how passionate he is about EVs, you have to hear the story about how he wound up getting the keys to the new Model S -- beating out even Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk had been dodging Jurvetson's numerous requests to put down a deposit on the car, saying that reservations for the vehicle couldn't be taken until … Read more

VCs' next big things: Big data, drugs, and education

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Some of Silicon Valley's greatest minds used an interesting piece of hardware to vote on which trends will rule the tech world: ping pong paddles.

The Churchill Club, a business and technology forum, hosted discussion here Tuesday night, along with Forbes magazine, to pick the brains of Kevin Efrusy, Bing Gordon, Reid Hoffman, Steve Jurvetson, and Peter Thiel.

With a few hundred people seated in the grand ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, each investor presented his case for two ideas for what he thought would be a dominating tech trend for the next five … Read more

VC turns office into Apollo museum

The last time I went to talk with venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, I spent more time ogling his museum of NASA Apollo gear than I did talking about his startup investments.

So I made an appointment to go see him again, with enough time to snap pictures of the equipment in his office in Palo Alto, Calif., office.

Click through our slideshow for a view into this small, private, and unique collection of space artifacts. … Read more

Valley VC learns to embrace government

This is the fifth in a series of profiles that look at how the tech industry is working with the federal government.

"We joke about the Internet routing around bad government," venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson said when I asked him about launching and running companies that have to make nice with Uncle Sam.

Jurvetson, a managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, made his first big venture capital score by putting money into Hotmail. He also invested in Skype. Of these early investments, he said, "They fell outside the realm of regulatory friction."

But times have changed … Read more

Steve Jurvetson: The constant search for disruption

Few people have played as big a role in recent tech booms and busts as Steve Jurvetson, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, Calif.

One of the leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, Jurvetson is best-known for his involvement in Hotmail, Interwoven, Kana, and more recently, Skype. He spends his spare time building and firing rockets of all sizes with his young son, and recently has financed a new movie, The Singing Revolution, about his parent's tiny home country of Estonia.

CNET News.com reporters Michael Kanellos and Carl-Gustav Linden recently sat down … Read more