TIM DRAPER RIDING HIGH... DFJ, EPLANET BREAKUP

SiliconBeat and the Mercury News has a story on Tim Draper and DFJ's recent success with Baidu and Skype. The story redeems Draper from his old image as hack in the VC world riding on the coattails of his father and grandfather.

These links also contain news of DFJ's breakup with ePlanet. It will be interesting to see how ePlanet survives without DFJ and vice versa. ePlanet definitely built up its practice on the brand name of DFJ, but DFJ benefited from ePlanet's international presence. Now DFJ has to built out their operations if they want to maintain their activity across the globe.

Here is our story published today in the Merc about Tim Draper, of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, who other VCs had long dismissed as a bit of a hack. Until this year -- when he became the hottest VC around, with big hits Skype and Baidu.

As usual, our newspaper version was stuffed into a space of about 28 column-length inches, when we'd really wanted to run about 40 inches. There's so much to say about Draper. Not merely that he has a penchant for crazy antics -- like riding elephants into parties, dressing up as Batman, leading singalongs at investment conferences or skiing in boxer shorts. But that he has become one of the more vocal supporters of how...

venture capital can transform other regions for good: "I've got to say, it's my mission," he told us. "I know how venture capital can transform a region. It's really entrepreneurship that transforms a region, but venture capital encourages it. So it's a cycle." (full post)