Steven T. "Steve" Jurvetson (born March 1, 1967) is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ)

Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $7 billion in capital commitments....

. He was a Venture Capitalist (VC)

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 investor in Hotmail

Hotmail

Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL". It was one of the first...

, Interwoven

Interwoven

Interwoven is a line of Content Management Systems and related products. Previously a stand-alone company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA and founded in 1995, it was acquired on March 17, 2009 by Autonomy...

, and Kana. He also led the firm's investments in Tradex

Tradex Technologies

TRADEX Technologies Inc. was a venture-backed company that became a leading provider of B2B marketplace e-commerce exchange solutions in 1999. Entirely Java-based, its product TRADEX Commerce Center was an out-of-the-box software and enabled the streamlining of processes like real-time online...

 and Cyras (acquired by Ariba

Ariba

Ariba is a software and information technology services company located in Sunnyvale, California.- Early life :Ariba was founded in 1996 by Bobby Lent, Boris Putanec, Paul Touw, Rob Desantis, Ed Kinsey, Paul Hegarty, and Keith Krach on the idea of using the Internet to enable companies to...

 and Ciena, respectively).

Current Board seats include NeoPhotonics, SpaceX

SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or more popularly and informally known as SpaceX, is an American space transport company that operates out of Hawthorne, California...

, Synthetic Genomics

Synthetic Genomics

Synthetic Genomics is a company dedicated to using modified or synthetically produced microorganisms to produce the alternative fuels ethanol and hydrogen. Synthetic Genomics was founded in part by J. Craig Venter...

, Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based company that designs, manufactures and sells electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components. It was the only automaker building and selling a zero-emission sports car, the Tesla Roadster, in serial production...

 and Wowd.

Jurvetson graduated from Dallas' St. Mark's School of Texas

St. Mark's School of Texas

The St. Mark's School of Texas is a nonsectarian preparatory day school for boys located in Preston Hollow, Dallas, Texas, USA. The School offers grades 1–12.-History:...

 in 1985. At Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, Jurvetson finished his degree in electrical engineering in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class. He then earned an M.S. in electrical engineering and an M.B.A., also from Stanford. As a consultant with Bain & Company

Bain & Company

Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Bain is considered one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, with 47 offices in 30 countries and over 5,500 professionals on staff globally...

, Jurvetson developed executive marketing, sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of companies in the software, networking, and semiconductor industries and worked together with Meg Whitman

Meg Whitman

Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard. A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School...

 and Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney

Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...

.

Jürvetson is a son of ethnic Estonian

Estonians

Estonians are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns and inhabiting, primarily, the country of Estonia. They speak a Finnic language known as Estonian...

 refugees, who fled the Soviet overtake of Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He is a relative of president Konstantin Päts

Konstantin Päts

Konstantin Päts VR I/1 and III/1 was the most influential politician of interwar Estonia. He was one of the first Estonians to become active in politics and started an almost 40-year political rivalry with Jaan Tõnisson, first through journalism with his newspaper Teataja, later through politics...

, a president of independent Estonia in 1930-s.

External links

• Jurvetson's blog "The J Curve"
• Photoblog on Flickr
• Speaking at Stanford University
• TED Talks: Steve Jurvetson on model rocketry at TED
  TED (conference)
  TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
  
   in 2007