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

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

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

Hotmail Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

, Memphis Meats, Mythic and

Nervana Systems Nervana Systems was an artificial intelligence software company based in San Diego, California, and Palo Alto, California. The company provided a full-stack software-as-a-service platform called Nervana Cloud that enabled businesses to develop cus ...

. He is currently a

board member A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

and served on Tesla's board from 2006–2020, among others. He later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at DFJ.

Early life and education

Jurvetson's father Tõnu Jürvetson fled

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

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 the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

, where he graduated from

St. Mark's School of Texas The St. Mark's School of Texas is a nonsectarian preparatory day school for boys in grades 1–12 in Dallas, Texas, United States, accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest. History St. Mark's traces its origins to the T ...

in 1985. At

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, 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 which 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 headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

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

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

and then NeXT Software. Jurvetson was named to the MIT

TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

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

Career

First Tesla Model S 3rd anniversary 2015

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 non-profit organizations. One of the Big Three management consultancies, Bain & Company was fou ...

, 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

, Interwoven, Kana, Tradex, and Cyras. Cyras in particular was acquired for 8 billion USD. Less favorably, DFJ and Jurvetson were an early financial backer of

Elizabeth Holmes Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American convicted fraudster and former biotechnology entrepreneur. In 2003, Holmes founded and was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company th ...

and her disgraced blood-testing firm

Theranos Theranos Inc. () was an American privately held corporation that was touted as a breakthrough health technology company. Founded in 2003 by then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos raised more than US$700 million from venture capitalists a ...

. Jurvetson was named to ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

"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 an American public Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends. The co ...

(acquired by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

), Flux, D-Wave,

, and Tesla. Also in 2016, President Barack Obama 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. Recode 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 are ...

and then later voted out of the company. A source familiar with the situation told Recode that the dismissal was triggered by DFJ learning that Jurvetson lied about what it considered "serious allegations." 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. Jurvetson was a member of the Tesla board of directors from 2006 to December 2020.Tesla Investor Relations
not listed on Board Members as of February 2021.

Venture capital investments

* Boxbe (2005)

References

External links

*
Personal Flickr page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jurvetson, Steve 1967 births Living people American company founders American financial businesspeople American venture capitalists American billionaires Businesspeople in online retailing Bain & Company employees Model rocketry St. Mark's School (Texas) alumni Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni Businesspeople from Arizona American people of Estonian descent Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Missing middle or first names Tesla, Inc. people

Early life and education

Career

Venture capital investments

See also

References

External links