Subah Zaeem

I found Skype in a newspaper article. The two guys who started Kazaa were building something new using the same file-sharing technology, but for a completely different purpose. I asked Howard Hartenbaum to have a look for me. He did and told me I should get out to London to meet them. I met Niklas Zennström in a London pub. He walked me through his plan to build a network of shared Wi-Fi. The business was called Shyper. I was impressed enough to offer to fund him and his partner, Janus Friis. He called a week later with a change of plans… "Change of plans. We are going to go after the long-distance carriers. Do you still want to invest?" I said yes. My partners had concerns about the file-sharing history, so I passed the seed to my dad, Bill Draper. I eventually funded Skype through DFJ ePlanet Ventures, our first international fund. When Skype had three million audio users, I flew to Tallinn for a board meeting. I asked Niklas to set up video conferencing equipment so I could interview him for a Tony Perkins event in Palo Alto. After the interview, Niklas laughed and said: "That was the first Skype video call ever." I hadn't even known they were working on video. Skype sold for $4.1 billion to eBay in 2005.

Before I was an investor, I was a guy carrying someone else's pitch deck around town. The company, Tasvir, used a computer to work with 2D mechanical CAD. We couldn't get investors to bite, but I learned a lot about mechanical CAD and the customers’ need for a new kind of MCAD. I asked Ian Edmonds, the marketing VP at Apollo Computer, what software mattered most for Apollo hardware. He pointed me to Polygen and SPG Consulting. I funded both, and while Polygen worked out ok, SPG Consulting became a bonanza. I met Sam Geisberg, and he showed me what he called, “reflexive technology,” the ability to flip between 2D and 3D mechanical drawings easily. As a software engineer myself, I couldn't figure out how he did it. It genuinely blew my mind. I introduced Sam to Don Fedderson, who was an MCAD expert, and Don brought in Steve Walske a fresh bright MBA. They added supersalesman, Richard Harrison as employee, and Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) was born. PTC went on to become the dominant MCAD company in the world. More than 10 million mechanical designs have been created on their products including your cars, your hair dryers, probably the chairs you're sitting in right now. When PTC went public, I was able to pay the entire SBIC loan and paid my family back, with interest.