Investor Profile: Boost VC — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

When Adam Draper started Boost VC in 2012, he bet on science fiction: Bitcoin when it was a basement hobby, virtual reality before headsets were cool. Today, Boost VC funding is one of the fastest pre-seed stamps in Silicon Valley's frontier-tech scene. The San Mateo firm leads $500k pre-seed rounds, backs 70+ startups a year, and says its portfolio founders have gone on to raise over $5 billion in follow-on capital. Its bar is unusual and famously simple: the only requirement is that your company must make one billion lives better.

Boost VC's investment thesis

Boost VC describes itself as the Y Combinator of sci-fi startups. It is a generalist frontier-tech investor — its website lists nuclear reactors, 10-ton satellites, electric boats, brain-computer interfaces and bioengineering among recent interests, alongside crypto, AI, robotics and aerospace. The pitch: "We take the bets no other investor is willing to make." Founded in June 2012 by Adam Draper (a fourth-generation VC and the son of Tim Draper) and Brayton Williams, it began Bitcoin-first and widened as the categories matured, incubating what became market leaders in each wave.

Sectors, stages and cheque size

Boost VC leads pre-seed rounds with $500,000 cheques, investing in 70+ startups every year from its San Mateo base in Hero City. It also participates at seed and Series A. Its third fund closed at $38.6 million in 2018; total current assets under management have not been publicly disclosed. The firm looks for founders with obvious energy, a credible answer to "why now", and a vision big enough to matter — founder quality first, ideas second, a lesson Draper has said the fund learned the hard way after chasing hot ideas early on.

Notable portfolio

Adam Draper's personal angel track record includes early bets on Coinbase, Amplitude and Plangrid. The Boost VC accelerator portfolio is wider and deeper: Etherscan, Ripio, Aragon, Protocol Labs, Wyre, Kraken and Vicarious all passed through its doors. The portfolio stood at 220 companies by 2018, and five early crypto investments — Lawnmower, Leet, Bitquick, Bitwall and Clevercoin — exited even before the 2017 bull run, with later, larger outcomes still to come.

Programs and perks

Boost VC ran its capital through accelerator "tribes" — roughly 20 startups per cohort, with eleven tribes run by 2018 — mixing housing, office space, entrepreneurship coaching and the cheque in a three-month sprint. Perks are less documented than the cash; the real value on offer is the Draper ecosystem around Hero City and a founder community that now spans hundreds of frontier-tech alumni.

How to apply for funding

Boost VC takes applications through the form on boost.vc, and Adam Draper has said publicly that founders can also email him directly at [email protected]. The intake is rolling: the firm invests in about 20 deals a year in recent counts, and Draper's advice to applicants is to come with a clear view of what you want to build and why you are the team to do it.