Billionaire Tim Draper Says His Son Beat Him To 'The Best Investment Of The Decade': 'My Son's Returns Solidly Beat My Own'

Billionaire Tim Draper has revealed some new lore about "the first family of Silicon Valley."

In a proud dad moment, Draper said Tuesday on X that son Adam Draper beat him to "the best investment of the decade."

The investment in question is leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), a venture known to have been backed by the father and son.

Draper said he had missed out on the company’s seed round due to a conflict of interest, but his son, having no such constraints, had dived in after an impressive pitch from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. 

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"We love the pitch and love Brian," Draper said. "I want in immediately, but I’d already invested in CoinLab (a startup with a similar premise). So… I passed on the seed round. Oops. My son didn’t have that conflict and invested in Coinbase’s first round at a very good price."

Draper said he was later able to get in during the firm’s growth round and the pre-IPO, but stressed that his son’s returns far outweighed his own.

"Both were great successes, but my son's returns solidly beat my own," he said. "Good to see that each generation gets better than the one before."

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A Family Affair

For the Draper family, venture capital is a family affair. Draper himself is a third generation venture capitalist, who made his first venture capital investments in the ‘80s following in the footsteps of his father William Henry Draper III, who himself got into the business in the ‘50s following in the footsteps of William Henry Draper Jr. who founded the VC firm Draper, Gaither and Anderson.

Like Draper, most of his children have followed the venture capital path. Draper’s first son, Adam, founded Boost VC in 2012, an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on Bitcoin businesses.

Commenting on his father’s account of his Coinbase investment, Adam said the investment "defined" his career.

"The network I built from this one investment is priceless," he said. "The obsession with the Bitcoin rebellion is priceless. The understanding of how markets evolve is also priceless."

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He quoted Armstrong as saying at the time that "at some point the world will be on one financial infrastructure," adding, "this could be a trillion dollar opportunity."

According to the fourth-generation venture capitalist, however, in hindsight, Armstrong was wrong.

"He was wrong," he said. "The crypto space is already multiples of trillions."

To be sure, the cryptocurrency space has come a long way from its niche libertarian roots. At last look, the market boasts a market capitalization of nearly $3.7 trillion as the adoption of Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain technology grows on Wall Street. 

Coinbase, now the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume in the U.S., has been a key player in the industry’s rise and recently became the first cryptocurrency native firm to be included in the S&P 500. At last look, the firm boasts a market capitalization of $99 billion.

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