Bill Draper has died

Man that was as a different ethos back then…”Draper realized that his ‘learning curve was flattened out’ in venture capital and detoured into public service”. Subsequently he funded 280 non profits.

The A16z team of today is probably deeply confused reading this article.

Third generation of Drapers doing this, which is its own kind of rare.

I met Mr Draper once. I was staying at the SFO hyatt, or maybe the Mariott, and had a couple hours to kill after breakfast and noticed there was some sort of conference going on, so I crashed it. I walked into a talk room and sat in the front row and introduced myself to my neighbors. On one side was Steven Levy (author of many books in the industry) and the other was Bill Draper. I don't really remember the conversation, nor even the topic of the conference - it was a brief conversation in the 5 or 10 minutes before the talk started. At the time I didn't really know who he was but I was a little star-struck by Mr Levy, and it was Levy who told me I should be more impressed by being next to Draper. Mr Draper thought that was funny and the three of us chatted a bit more about whatever. I found it interesting that Mr. Draper was a surprisingly relatable guy (particularly given what I know about him know) and that he was very insightful of technology for someone who was in his 70 or 80s at the time.

RIP Mr. Draper. I didn't know it when we talked, but you helped make my career possible - thanks!

https://archive.ph/YRgDY

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/william-draper...

I do wish that "Silicon Valley" would have been elsewhere less useful, though. As mentioned, before it became the tech hub, the Santa Clara valley was extremely productive agricultural land that is now paved over.

Maybe the site would be more cheerful if there were a separate section for AI, obituaries and diseases.