A financial bust is the best time to take risks

Many great businesses have started because of a financial bust, or difficulty in environment, or just because their employer wasn’t doing it right To hear Tim Draper tell it, the current financial crisis is yet another opportunity for entrepreneurs to build great, disruptive businesses. The founder and managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), which has notched up successes such as Chinese search engine Baidu.com Inc., Internet telephony company Skype Inc., acquired by eBay Inc. for $2.6 billion (about Rs12,662 crore now), and Hotmail, bought by Microsoft Corp. for $400 million, calls it a “most exciting time”. A third-generation venture capitalist (VC)—father Bill Draper set up venture capital firms SutterHill Ventures and Draper Richards, while grandfather William Henry Draper Jr set up... [read full story]