Boost VC

Boost VC is a venture capital firm in San Mateo, California that leads pre-seed rounds in deep-tech startups and describes its aim as making "sci-fi a reality."¹ The firm was started in 2012 by Adam Draper and Brayton Williams,² and Adam Draper is the son of Tim Draper and the great-grandson of William H. Draper Jr.³

Founders and team

The firm's founder post of August 27, 2026 says that "In 2012, Brayton Williams and I started Boost VC," and that the firm's aim was to "Help Founders."² The site lists Adam Draper as "Managing Director" and "Founder of Boost VC, 4th Generation VC," and says he was an angel investor in Coinbase, Amplitude and PlanGrid.⁴ Fortune reports that he dropped out of UCLA to found a secondary marketplace called Xpert Financial, and that a crowdfunding platform he built "pivoted into his own venture firm, Boost VC."³

The site lists Brayton Williams as "Co-Founder & Partner," with earlier posts at Morgan Stanley and Xpert Financial, and says he was a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.⁴ The other people on the site's team page are Maddie Callander (partner), Gus Domel (partner), Danielle Sosnick (portfolio support), Derek Brown (head of finance) and Troy Kanji (analyst).⁴ The FAQ says portfolio founders visiting from out of town receive free housing at Draper University, "located across the street from our office."¹

Funds on file with the SEC

Boost VC's vehicles file notices of private offerings on Form D with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Boost VC Fund 3, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership with an office at 55 East Third Avenue, San Mateo, reports a first sale dated March 25, 2016, a $55,000,000 offering and $29,028,000 sold to 38 investors. Adam Draper signed the February 2017 filing for its general partner, Boost VC Fund 3 Partners LLC.⁵

Boost VC Fund 4, L.P. reports a first sale on November 2, 2018 and a $40,418,750 offering, all of it sold, to 33 investors, in a filing dated September 2020.⁶ Boost VC Accelerator 3, L.P. reports a first sale on August 5, 2021 under an indefinite offering, with $48,555,001 sold to 50 investors. Adam Draper is listed as an executive officer.⁷ Boost VC Crypto 1, L.P. reports a first sale on February 20, 2022 and $14,495,000 sold to 27 investors, and Adam Draper signed the filing.⁸

Boost VC Deep Tech Fund 4, L.P. filed in July 2024 for a $75,000,000 offering with nothing sold. A September 5, 2025 amendment signed by Brayton Williams as president of the general partner reports $84,447,500 sold to 100 investors, with Adam Draper and Brayton Williams listed as directors.⁹ Fortune reported the same month that Boost VC "raised over $87 million for its fourth fund," a vehicle backed mostly by family offices and high-net-worth individuals, including Adam Draper's father, grandfather and cousin.³

The filer that appears under CIK 2096029 first registered as RA-1022 Fund III, a series of Boost VC SPV, LP, on December 17, 2025, and was then amended as Boost VC Nuclear, a series of Boost VC Lead, LP. Both report a first sale on December 15, 2025 and $56,223,435 sold to 63 investors. Brayton Williams signed the filings as manager of the issuer, and Boost VC Deep Tech Fund 4 Partners LLC is listed as a director.¹⁰ TechCrunch reported on December 17, 2025 that Radiant Nuclear had raised $300 million in a round led by Draper Associates and Boost VC, with Ark Venture Fund, Chevron Technology Ventures, Founders Fund and others participating, at a valuation above $1.8 billion.¹¹

Boost VC SPV, LP files a separate Form D for each deal vehicle, with series names such as UP Fund I and WY Fund I (2020), FI Fund I (December 2020), RI Fund I and ET Fund I (2021), SH Fund I (2021), VE Fund I and UN Fund II (2022), RA-0206 Fund I (2023), KS-1222 Fund I and RA-1011 Fund II (2024), NE-0324 Fund I and NE-0722 Fund II (2025), and MO-0129 Fund I and CA-0724 Fund I (2026). Excluding the 2025 Nuclear series, the single-series offerings run from $239,040 (RI Fund I, 2021) to $10,229,686 (ET Fund I, 2021).¹² The 2020 filings list the general partner's directors as Belltower Fund Group, Ltd. and a second entity with "Fund GP, LLC" in its name, both of Seattle, Washington; the SH Fund I filing of December 2021 lists AngelList Canada GP, Inc. of Ottawa in place of the second entity.¹³ One series, RI Fund I, was later reported under the same CIK as NI Fund I, a series of Hampton VC Funds, LP, with the same $239,040 offering.¹²

Two other Form D filings name Draper or Williams as a director. Brayton Williams is listed as a director of Octane AI, whose June 2021 filing reports $5,000,000 sold to five investors.¹⁴ Adam Draper is listed as a director of Make School, whose October 2017 filing reports $10,129,992 sold to 21 investors.¹⁵

Investments and stated thesis

The FAQ says Boost VC is a "$400M AUM" firm that makes "$500k" lead or co-lead pre-seed investments, with checks flexible between $100k and $1M and $50k fellowship checks for founders "building sci-fi tech."¹ The site describes the firm as generalist and lists the sectors as robotics, AI, bio, health, materials, space tech, computing, crypto, ocean tech, AR/VR, climate and energy.¹ Its "What We Look For" text says the firm is "generalist investors who have invested in Nuclear Reactors, 10 ton Satellites, Electric Boats, Brain replacements, Bio Super powers and more."⁴ The fellowship page lists backed founders including "Teenage drone builders," "Sperm sorting to eliminate genetic disease," "Cancer sniffing dogs," "Alchemical 3D printers" and "Brain replacements."¹⁶

The FAQ names K2 Space, Prospera, Radiant Nuclear, Colossal Biosciences and New Limit as "BIG idea examples," and says the firm's themes include "global financial changes sparked by peer-to-peer money like Bitcoin."¹ The FAQ says the firm "led Radiant Nuclear's $300M Series D round," a company it had backed since its pre-seed round.¹ Fortune reported that Radiant closed a $165 million Series C in May 2025.³ Fortune also lists Colossal Biosciences, which it describes as claiming to have brought back the dire wolf from extinction, among the deep-tech companies Adam Draper has backed.³ The home page links to press items on Radiant Nuclear's raise, a $130 million Deepgram round at a $1.3 billion valuation, and a $20 million round for Grid Aero's autonomous cargo drones, and it links to the websites of K2 Space, Starfish Space and Volley Games.⁴

Adam Draper is listed on the site as an angel investor in Coinbase.⁴ The Amended and Restated Investors' Rights Agreement of March 15, 2021, filed as Exhibit 4.2 to Coinbase Global, Inc.'s March 17, 2021 Form S-1/A, lists the holders of Coinbase preferred stock on its Schedule A, and the list includes Boost VC Fund 3, L.P., Ghost Angel LLC, and three Draper entities: Draper Associates V, L.P., Draper Associates Partners V, LLC and Draper Associates Investments, LLC.¹⁷

A Regulation A offering statement for Mr. Mango LLC, filed in October 2022 under the CIK later used by Skybound Holdings LLC, lists Boost VC Fund 4, LP as holder of 239 Series B preferred interests and Ghost Angel LLC as holder of 1,917, both at 55 East 3rd Avenue, San Mateo.¹⁸ A 2025 Form 1-K/A for the same CIK includes signature pages to the Eighth Amendment to the company's operating agreement on which Boost VC Fund 4, LP signs through Boost VC Fund 4 Partners LLC by Adam Draper as managing director, and Ghost Angel LLC signs by Adam Draper as managing member.¹⁹ The same filing's ownership table lists Ghost Angel LLC at 55 East Third Avenue, San Mateo, with 68,890 Series B preferred interests, 19.32 percent of the class.¹⁹

ELDAEON

The company's X profile names Boost VC as a pre-seed backer of ELDAEON and 1517 Fund as an angel backer.²⁰ A September 27, 2026 post from the company reads: "Our backers @1517fund and @BoostVC are early to the UAP tech industry. Will you be?"²⁰

Tim Draper and the 2014 bitcoin purchase

Tim Draper bought all of the nearly 30,000 bitcoins that the United States Marshals Service auctioned on a Friday in late June 2014, coins confiscated in October 2013 when the FBI shut down the online market Silk Road.²¹ The report says Draper planned to work with Vaurum, a bitcoin exchange, to supply bitcoins to emerging markets, and quotes his statement: "Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies."²¹ Fortune calls the 2014 purchase "iconic" and says the family is now best known for its enthusiasm around crypto.³

William H. Draper Jr.

William H. Draper Jr. was born in Harlem, New York City, on August 10, 1894, took a bachelor's and a master's degree in economics at New York University, and was chairman of the student delegation to Henry Ford's 1915 peace expedition to Europe, according to his 1972 oral history interview at the Harry S. Truman Library.²² After the First World War he worked at National City Bank and Bankers' Trust Company, and he joined Dillon, Read and Company in 1926, where James Forrestal was already a senior member.²² He served in the Army, was called to the general staff in 1940, worked with Lewis B. Hershey on the Selective Service Act, and in 1945 went to Germany at the request of General Lucius D. Clay to take charge of the economic side of the occupation.²² The Truman Library lists his posts as Chief of the Economics Division of the Control Council for Germany (1945 to 1946), military government adviser to the Secretary of State at the 1947 Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, Under Secretary of War in 1947, Under Secretary of the Army from 1947 to 1949, and United States Special Representative in Europe with the rank of ambassador from January 1952 to June 1953.²²

In 1947 Draper went to Japan soon after taking the post of under secretary and later took a group of businessmen there for about a month, including Paul Hoffman of Studebaker and Percy Johnston of Chemical Bank, to study the Japanese economy. The group's report, which the State Department described as compiled by Draper's senior advisers during his trip, was released to the press on May 19, 1948.²²²³ In the 1972 interview Draper said the report led the President to change policy on Japan's economy on the recommendation of the Secretary of State, that he then recommended Joseph M. Dodge, who had run the finance division in Germany, for Japan, and that Dodge balanced the Japanese budget within about six to nine months.²² The historian Howard Schonberger wrote that Harry Kern, foreign affairs editor of Newsweek, was the most notable of the conservative critics of the occupation reforms in Japan, and that Kern and Secretary of Commerce W. Averell Harriman were the catalyst for the shift in American policy.²⁴

In his interview Draper said that after leaving government in mid-1953 he ran the Mexican Light and Power Company for six years, and that in 1959 he moved to California and formed a financing firm with General Frederick L. Anderson, his deputy in NATO.²² The 1981 White House announcement lists his son as an associate of Draper, Gaither & Anderson from 1959 to 1962, and the Computer History Museum describes the firm as formed by Draper with Rowan Gaither and Fred Anderson in 1958.²⁵²⁶ Draper told the Truman Library that he later became chairman of Combustion Engineering, retired as chairman in 1965, and from then on devoted his time to the population problem: he was honorary chairman of the Population Crisis Committee, sat on the governing body of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, represented the United States on the United Nations Population Commission by appointment of Richard Nixon, and helped Paul Hoffman raise government contributions for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, about $30 million from 46 governments in the most recent year.²²

In November 1958 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed a group of "eminent Americans" to "undertake a completely independent, objective, and nonpartisan analysis of the military assistance aspects of the U.S. Mutual Security Program," with Draper as chairman of the Draper Committee.²⁷ Its members were Dillon Anderson, Joseph M. Dodge, Alfred M. Gruenther, Marx Leva, John J. McCloy, George McGhee, Joseph T. McNarney, Arthur W. Radford and James E. Webb, with Tracy Voorhees as counsel.²⁷ The committee's interim reports are dated March 17, June 3 and July 13, 1959, and its final report is dated August 17, 1959.²⁷²⁸ The committee's mailings series includes material on the "population explosion," and its economic assistance folders include a paper titled "The Population Explosion."²⁷

William H. Draper III

Ronald Reagan announced on March 18, 1981 that he would nominate William H. Draper III as president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.²⁵ The White House announcement described him as founder and general partner of Sutter Hill Ventures in Palo Alto, California, a firm that had supplied equity capital to 150 young manufacturing companies, and listed earlier posts as an associate at Draper, Gaither & Anderson from 1959 to 1962 and a sales representative for Inland Steel in Chicago from 1954 to 1959. It gave his birth as White Plains, New York, on January 1, 1928, a Yale B.A. in 1950 and a Harvard M.B.A. in 1954, and listed him as a fund-raiser for the Reagan-Bush campaign in California in 1980, national cochairman of the finance committee for George H. W. Bush's presidential campaign in 1980, and a candidate for Congress in 1967.²⁵ The Computer History Museum traces the family line from William H. Draper III to his son Tim Draper, and says Tim formed Draper, Fisher Jurvetson in 1985 and now invests through Draper Associates.²⁶

On December 22, 1983 Richard W. Murphy of the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs sent Under Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger an action memorandum on whether to sign a letter recommending that EXIM approve financing for Iraq. Eagleburger signed the memorandum and sent the letter to Draper on December 24, 1983, addressed "Dear Bill," stating that "the terrorism issue, therefore, should no longer be an impediment to EXIM financing for U.S. sales to Iraq."²⁹

The United Nations Development Programme's list of past administrators gives Draper's service as president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank from 1981 to 1986 and as UNDP administrator from 1986 to 1993.³⁰ The General Assembly confirmed him as administrator on April 28, 1986.³¹