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Bill Draper has died

111 points · 32 comments · bookofjoe

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bookofjoe · 1791116503 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://archive.ph/YRgDY" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/YRgDY
hncbw02z5a · 1791120571 · focus · HN ↗
Third generation of Drapers doing this, which is its own kind of rare.
1. bix6 · 1791155554 · focus · HN ↗
  They’re on 4th gen now
jhbadger · 1791125340 · focus · HN ↗
I do wish that "Silicon Valley" would have been elsewhere less useful, though. As mentioned, before it became the tech hub, the Santa Clara valley was extremely productive agricultural land that is now paved over.
1. quantified · 1791143379 · focus · HN ↗
  Sort of metaphorical, eh?
  1. _rend · 1791143751 · focus · HN ↗
    Too on-the-nose to make for good fiction.
2. pfdietz · 1791147085 · focus · HN ↗
  We have lots of agricultural land; too much, actually. This is a side effect of the green revolution.
  1. fmajid · 1791147534 · focus · HN ↗
    What we in California don’t have is sustainably plentiful water, or a sane system of water rights to apportion it.
    brudgers · 1791154224 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    btilly · 1791157455 · focus · HN ↗
    Out west, water rights are based in common law, sometimes formalized by legislation. And common law is based on how miners and prospectors resolved water conflicts while panning for gold.
    While there may be no sane system, the legacy of "first come, first serve" and ",use it or lose it" is particularly insane.
    kelnos · 1791154308 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    mlmonkey · 1791157605 · focus · HN ↗
    A trip to Palm Springs is an eye-opener. You see so many sidewalks being watered at all hours of the day, and the water just flowing right into the drains. Such a shame in a desert area.
    Nifty3929 · 1791171862 · focus · HN ↗
    Water in California IS plentiful! But 85% of the water that is used is used by agriculture, leaving people and businesses to fight over the rest. Also, water "saved" in homes actually does not save any water, because it then gets used on a farm. Each gallon Californians reduce in homes produces one additional almond, but it gets used either way.
    What's worse is that California is effectively exporting 40% of the water in the form of agricultural products. That is, half the food produced is exported. California sells their water, much like oil, to the rest of the world. And half of the exports are foreign exports (rather than to another state).
    Did you know California exports a very large amount of rice to Asia? There are rice paddies surrounding Sacramento.
JSR_FDED · 1791133516 · focus · HN ↗
Man that was as a different ethos back then…”Draper realized that his ‘learning curve was flattened out’ in venture capital and detoured into public service”. Subsequently he funded 280 non profits.
The A16z team of today is probably deeply confused reading this article.
1. georgemcbay · 1791142676 · focus · HN ↗
  > The A16z team of today is probably deeply confused reading this article.
  Possibly not considering Humpty Dumpty's stated goal of zero introspection.
  1. bix6 · 1791156058 · focus · HN ↗
    You would get downvoted for this but it’s an accurate point. I can’t imagine making a comment like that and keeping my job.
  2. hn_throwaway_99 · 1791160495 · focus · HN ↗
    I didn't know that was a real thing Marc Andreesen actually said. What is up with all these psychos masquerading as humans? It's so depressing because I used to idolize folks like Andreesen, Musk, Bezos, Page, etc. Now I find them all basically disgusting weirdos. Not sure if it's a mix of having to be kinds narcissistic/psychopathic to achieve that level of success in the first place, or if being so outlandishly wealthy insulated you from normal human guardrails (probably both).
    But in any case, I don't quite get how folks who work at a16z can look at themselves in the mirror everyday.
    FlowingRiver · 1791163808 · focus · HN ↗
    Mirrors are probably banned from the office.
    zhivota · 1791172823 · focus · HN ↗
    There's something about becoming rich that seems to corrupt a high percentage of people. You can tell which ones, they are the ones who keep trying to get more money.
    The ones who don't get corrupted tend to live quiet lives after they reach a high level of wealth.
    altmanaltman · 1791173058 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes there are famously no poor pyschopaths or weirdos. Elon Musk was no flower child who got corrupted by money. He was always a piece of shit.
    adventured · 1791180601 · focus · HN ↗
    The most common misunderstanding that people have about the extreme rich like Bezos or Musk, is that they're trying to get more money as their motivation. It's a remarkable failure of understanding, a kind of overly simplistic boiling down. Akin to: Iraq was about the oil (it was about power and control over the Middle East more broadly, oil is a trinket like the USD, secondary; the Middle East is a great powers battleground, between the US and Russia (and more recently China)).
    They're trying to get their way, money is one means. They're trying to implement something they have in mind, outcomes, money is very useful for that in most cases. They're not trying to get more money as the thing unto itself, it's a tool of power/control/influence.
    People that have never been near extreme wealth usually fall back to the very primitive reasoning of: it's just money grubbing, it's base greed. Because that's bumper sticker simple thinking that is easy to cuddle up to.
    Back in reality, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al. these people are humans, they want things, they want outcomes, they have notions for how they think the world should be. Money helps them pursue that, it's nothing but a tool for them, a means to an end. It's comically foolish to think the money is the end.
    narrator · 1791172845 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    pbreit · 1791174094 · focus · HN ↗
    This take is ill-informed. He's just saying you can't get hung up on your previous investments, decisions, etc. Keep moving forward. A16Z folks are very human, terrific at what they do and good people.
    georgemcbay · 1791174827 · focus · HN ↗
    > This take is ill-informed.
    People can judge for themselves what he meant by this (and how embarrassingly awful his grasp of cultural history is) by watching this clip:
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b6Zw50f5jJk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b6Zw50f5jJk
    Trigger warning for any Andreessen clip: be prepared to listen to him spend half of his talking time apparently literally sniffing his own farts.
    tomhow · 1791180632 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you please stop making personally mean comments about people's personal attributes on HN? This is not a site for people who think this is the way to discuss things, and eventually we have to ban people who keep doing it.
    It's fine to debate and critique people's actions. But these repeated sneering, belittling snarls and someone's knowledge level and even physical characteristics is off limits here, no matter who it's about. This is a site for people who have higher standards of themselves than this.
    Please read the guidelines carefully and have a think about if this is really the right place for your style of discourse. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    hn_throwaway_99 · 1791175901 · focus · HN ↗
    I've read a ton of Andreesen's pronouncements over the recent years, including many things that were specifically in his own words, e.g. <a href="https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/" rel="nofollow">https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
    Frankly, if I had to compare that manifesto with the Unabombers', I think the Unabomber's makes a lot more sense. Everything I've ever heard out of Andreesen's mouth is "whatever advancements that have made me a mega billionaire are great, and anybody who says otherwise wants to murder children." The absolute cluelessness over even willing to contemplate that technological advancements have some real downsides is so self serving it's gross.
    You say "A16Z folks are very human, terrific at what they do and good people." I accept they're very human and terrific at what they do, but no, I don't think they are good people. Hardly anybody ever really thinks "maybe we're the baddies?", and people can tell themselves all sorts of stories about why they're good people as they're raking in millions of dollars. But I'm sick of pretending that people at that level don't have a choice, and what they're choosing to do is cash in while investing in a shitload of things that have negative societal impact. I mean, someone at a16z greenlit the Doublespeed (aka "AI bot farm") investment, and I'm sure they think of themselves as a good person.
  3. [deleted] · 1791180179 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
2. bix6 · 1791155847 · focus · HN ↗
  Big VCs are parasites and I will die on that hill.
3. pbreit · 1791174198 · focus · HN ↗
  Have we heard of any of those nonprofits? Have any of them made a dent in anything? Why are people so mesmerized by nonprofits?
  1. random3 · 1791176475 · focus · HN ↗
    Who's "we"?
    Also clearly, what's the expectation that we hear that Kiva or Room to Read is baked by DRK? Have you heard of these? Which non profits have you heard of?
    Consider this: "19% of all global Audacious Project awardees started out as DRK-funded entities and 10% of all Skoll Award for Social Innovation winners come from the DRK portfolio"
    Does this help? Do you know who's Audacious or Skoll? And if, not perhaps can we reason when it's appropriate to challenge anything based on close to zero information about the subject?
  2. [deleted] · 1791177183 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
2ahg6a · 1791142738 · focus · HN ↗
Maybe the site would be more cheerful if there were a separate section for AI, obituaries and diseases.
1. khazhoux · 1791147812 · focus · HN ↗
  You take the good, you take the bad. Take them both and there you have the facts of life.
sophacles · 1791145346 · focus · HN ↗
I met Mr Draper once. I was staying at the SFO hyatt, or maybe the Mariott, and had a couple hours to kill after breakfast and noticed there was some sort of conference going on, so I crashed it. I walked into a talk room and sat in the front row and introduced myself to my neighbors. On one side was Steven Levy (author of many books in the industry) and the other was Bill Draper. I don't really remember the conversation, nor even the topic of the conference - it was a brief conversation in the 5 or 10 minutes before the talk started. At the time I didn't really know who he was but I was a little star-struck by Mr Levy, and it was Levy who told me I should be more impressed by being next to Draper. Mr Draper thought that was funny and the three of us chatted a bit more about whatever. I found it interesting that Mr. Draper was a surprisingly relatable guy (particularly given what I know about him know) and that he was very insightful of technology for someone who was in his 70 or 80s at the time.
RIP Mr. Draper. I didn't know it when we talked, but you helped make my career possible - thanks!
1. bredren · 1791166369 · focus · HN ↗
  I got to meet Bill briefly while taking part in his grandson Adam’s Boost VC accelerator in the early bitcoin days.
  Bill would attend both events in support of Tim and Adam. I had a great experience with both the Drapers as a founder.
  One time, while living with my cofounder in the hotel Tim was restoring in downtown San Mateo, I broke the hotel elevator.
  The laundry was on the basement level and ~everyone used this brick to prop open the door so could dash to the laundry move it to the dryer and dash back without loosing the car.
  Well, the brick was not well propped and somehow the door pushed it to a point where it could close but also somehow carry it up the shaft.
  Watching the door close it was just like, uh oh.
  Up goes the elevator idk a few stories and then the sound of a brick tumbling down the shaft hitting who knows what.
  Ya, the elevator stopped working immediately. I owned up to it the next day, writing Tim and offering to pay for what probably would have consumed all of our accelerator funds of damage I had caused.
  He thanked me for my honesty and said not to worry about it.
  Tim (and Adam) went on to invest in not one but two of my ventures.
  Anyway, I realize this is about Bill but I think a person can be reflected in not only themselves but those that they raise and wanted to share this.
  Oh and Bill, at least back then, did not think much of Bitcoin. :)
  1. AceJohnny2 · 1791177457 · focus · HN ↗
    > Oh and Bill, at least back then, did not think much of Bitcoin.
    Smart man!
bix6 · 1791156806 · focus · HN ↗
What a great read. RIP Bill!
AceJohnny2 · 1791177589 · focus · HN ↗
(passed away on Sept 8th, article from Sept 30th)
georgeburdell · 1791177976 · focus · HN ↗
Somewhat unrelated but both of Draper’s siblings, but not his own parents, lived to similar ages of ~97 and ~99
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Draper_Jr" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Draper_Jr. (Personal life section)
karuppiah7890 · 1791180680 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/william-draper-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVE.jCAb.ACZgFAqWsfTz&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/william-draper... an alternative URL for the post - a gift article URL

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