Stephen T. Jurvetson (born March 1, 1967) is an American

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

businessman and

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

ist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), he was an early investor in

Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

, Memphis Meats, Mythic and Nervana Systems. He is currently a board member of

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

among others. He later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at DFJ. Jurvetson was named to ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

"Midas List" of Tech's Top Investors in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016. He was a board member of Synthetic Genomics,

Planet Labs Planet Labs PBC (formerly Planet Labs, Inc. and Cosmogia, Inc.) is a publicly traded American Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint tren ...

, Nervana Systems (acquired by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

), Flux, D-Wave,

, and Tesla. Jurvetson was a member of the Tesla board of directors from 2006 to December 2020.

Early life and education

Jurvetson's father Tõnu Jürvetson fled

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

through Germany just before Soviet re-occupation in 1944. Tõnu was married to another Estonian immigrant, Tiiu Tia Jürvetson. Even though within the family, the Estonian language was used, Steve never learned it and his parents used it as a secret language between themselves. Steve Jurvetson was the first US-born Estonian to become an e-resident of Estonia. Jurvetson grew up in

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

, where he graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas in 1985. At

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, Jurvetson finished his degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 2.5 years and graduated No. 1 in his class. He then earned an M.S. in electrical engineering and an M.B.A., also from Stanford. His first job out of Stanford was working as an R&D engineer at

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

(HP). After two years at HP, he moved on as a product marketer at

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

and then NeXT Software. Jurvetson was named to the ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

'' Innovators Under 35 in 1999 to "recognize young entrepreneurs who can deliver", including making the first investment in

Career

First Tesla Model S 3rd anniversary 2015

Steve Jurvetson with Explorer 1 and Sputnik

As a consultant with

Bain & Company Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and nonprofit organizations. One of the Big Three (management consultancies), Big Three management co ...

, Jurvetson developed marketing, sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of companies in the software, networking, and semiconductor industries. He first joined DFJ after his second year of business school, and became a partner after proving his talent on several investments. At DFJ, Jurvetson was involved in lucrative investments with

, the Chinese company Baidu, Skype, Interwoven, Kana, Tradex, and Cyras. Cyras in particular was acquired for US$8 billion. Less favorably, DFJ and Jurvetson were an early financial backer of

Elizabeth Holmes Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection with her blood-testing company, Theranos. The company's valuation soared after it claimed to have revolutionize ...

and the disgraced blood-testing firm Theranos. Also in 2016, President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

appointed Jurvetson as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. On November 13, 2017, Jurvetson stepped down from his role at DFJ Venture Capital in addition to taking leave from the boards of SpaceX and Tesla following an internal DFJ investigation into allegations of sexual harassment. While there were allegations of inappropriate behavior, DFJ did not receive an official complaint of harassment or misconduct. While the findings of the investigation were not made public, anonymous sources alleged that the investigation "uncovered behaviors by Jurvetson that were unacceptable related to a negative tone toward women entrepreneurs." Jurvetson stated that stepping down from his role was unrelated to the allegations, writing "I am leaving DFJ to focus on personal matters" in a statement posted to

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

. ''

Recode ''Recode'' (stylized as recode; formerly ''Re/code'') was a technology news website that focused on the business of Silicon Valley. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher founded it in January 2014, after they left Dow Jones and the similar website ...

'' reported that Jurvetson was placed on a

leave of absence The labour law concept of leave, specifically paid leave or, in some countries' long-form, a leave of absence, is an authorised prolonged absence from work, for any reason authorised by the workplace. When people "take leave" in this way, they ar ...

and then later voted out of the company.

Current

Jurvetson cofounded a new venture fund, Future Ventures, in April 2018. The inaugural $200M venture capital fund focuses on environmentally sustainable transportation, food technology and high power computer systems. Future Ventures closed second and third rounds of funding in January 2021 and April 2023, respectively, each for $200 million.

Venture capital investments

Boxbe Boxbe is a free service that prioritizes and screens spam in personal email. Users can select which email they want to receive, and which email goes to spam. It presents a challenge to the sender that requires a human response. Bulk anonymous da ...

(2005)

References

External links