Online Event
Venture Trailblazers Featuring Adam Draper
Exclusive insights from the trailblazers shaping the future of startups and venture capital.
Date
Oct 14, 2026
Time
08:00 am - 09:00 am
Address
Online Event
Venture Trailblazers is an exclusive event series that connects leading investors, founders, and ecosystem leaders from across the globe to discuss the latest trends in startups and venture capital. For this edition, we are honored to welcome Adam Draper, Founder and Managing Director of Boost VC and one of the most prolific first-check investors in deep tech. The goal of Venture Trailblazers is to educate and connect founders, leaders, mentors, and investors across the global Founder Institute, VC Lab, and FI Venture Networks.
Adam Draper joins Adeo Ressi for the next edition of Venture Trailblazers.
Adam Draper is the Founder and Managing Director of Boost VC, a San Mateo-based pre-seed firm and accelerator that writes the first $500K check into founders building what he calls the sci-fi future — space, nuclear, robotics, bio, crypto, and AI. Since 2012, Boost VC has grown to more than $300 million in assets under management, with a portfolio of 400+ active companies that have collectively raised over $5 billion in follow-on capital. His early bets include Coinbase, Colossal Biosciences, Etherscan, Deepgram, Radiant Nuclear, K2 Space, Starfish Space, Amplitude, and PlanGrid.
Adam is a fourth-generation venture capitalist and two-time entrepreneur. While at UCLA he co-founded Xpert Financial, a secondary market for private securities, then launched Boost VC in 2012 with co-founder Brayton Williams. In September 2025, he closed Boost VC Fund 4 at $87.65 million, backed largely by family offices and individuals — including his father, grandfather, and cousin. He co-authored Breakfast with Pops: A Venture Capital Handbook with his grandfather, venture pioneer Bill Draper, sits on the boards of Radiant Nuclear and Skybound, and writes publicly each week for founders and emerging managers on the craft of first-check investing.
What We'll Cover:
- Adam's path into venture as a fourth-generation investor, and why he built a firm around the ideas everyone else calls impossible
- What he looks for when writing a standardized $500K first check, often years before revenue or data exists
- Lessons from 400+ portfolio companies, including Coinbase, Colossal Biosciences, and Radiant Nuclear
- How Boost VC uses velocity, standardization, and community to source and win at the earliest stage — roughly 70 new investments a year
- His advice for emerging managers building conviction-driven firms and returning real DPI to LPs
Who Should Attend
- Deep tech and frontier founders raising or preparing to raise their first institutional round
- Repeat founders refining how they pitch an unproven category to pre-seed investors
- Angels and VCs studying first-check sourcing, speed, and conviction
- Ecosystem leaders and emerging managers building global founder networks
About Venture Trailblazers
Venture Trailblazers is an exclusive event series that educates and connects operators and investors across the global Founder Institute, VC Lab, and FI Venture Network communities. Each edition spotlights a leading voice from the ecosystem in a candid conversation on what's driving the next wave of innovation in venture capital.
About VC Lab
VC Lab (https://GoVCLab.com) is the leading venture capital accelerator worldwide for new and emerging managers. 900+ funds have successfully completed the program, building ethical and enduring venture capital firms around the world. The program provides all the tools needed to launch a fund and close on capital in six months or less. Managers participate in weekly fund-building sprints, receive tactical advice from experienced domain experts, and join a collaborative, global community of peers. VC Lab also develops essential fundraising skills and offers access to Decile Hub, the trusted venture platform for VCs to generate top decile returns.
About Founder Institute:
The Founder Institute (https://fi.co/) is the World's Largest AI-Native Company Builder, giving idea-stage, first-time founders, and employees making the leap to entrepreneurship the tools, global network, and proven methodology to build an AI-powered startup from zero to funding. Since 2009, our structured programs have helped over 9,000 founders across 100 countries raise more than $2BN in funding. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 6 continents, our mission is to empower talented and motivated people everywhere to build impactful, AI-powered companies.
Additional Resources: Find more Startup Events (https://fi.co/events), learn about Funding Benchmarks and Milestones (https://fi.co/benchmarks), or visit our Insights Blog (https://fi.co/insights) for more startup tips.
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