It s a classic Silicon Valley pull-yourself-up-by-the bootstraps-with-the-help-of-dad s-celebrity-name story.
At 28, self-styled Valley Girl Jesse Draper is about to get her own TV show.
After hosting her online tech-talk show the past six years, having started out in the garage of her dad and mega-wealthy VC guru Tim Draper, Jesse is moving from one screen to another, this time on Sunday evenings on two San Francisco Bay Area channels, KTVU-FOX2 and KICU-TV36.
According to CNET, those two venues will give The Valley Girl Show a potential audience of more than 6 million viewers.
Draper, a former Nickelodeon star, knows that while some may always affix an asterisk to her prominence, she makes clear who it is that s the driving force behind the show s success.
I ve been pushing this rock up a hill for a long time, she says. When I started, everyone would say, Well, your dad gave you all these contacts. And that s fine. But Eric Schmidt s daughter went to my high school. I grew up with these people. That s how I started. From there, I just reached out. Now I go after who I want.
I want an approachable style, she adds. I m not there to find out how much money people are making or about corporate layoffs. I ve established a rapport with these people and I m trying to get them to open up.
Known for her online shenanigans, pink frilly outfits and the strong stable of high-tech personalities she s brought on her show to interview, Draper certainly wasn t hampered by her high-tech pedigree. As one of the Valley s most high-profile tech execs, Tim Draper is an established venture capitalist who has made billions while managing to attract publicity for his sometimes off-beat ideas. Recently, he famously called for California to be broken up into six smaller states. Last month, backers of his proposal announced they had collected enough signatures to place the measure on the 2016 ballot.
Jesse s high-tech blue blood goes back even further than dear ol dad. Tim is third in a line of VC pioneers, including his dad William Henry Draper III and his grandpa, William Henry Draper Jr.
Yet even with that gold-plated name, Jesse said in a recent interview that being e Draper was never a guarantee of his online show s success. There were times when I thought maybe I ll need to shut the show down, she recalled.
According to the CNET report:
She stuck with it and her program, , has since gone on to feature a guest list comprising a veritable who s who from the technology world — landing everyone from the reclusive Internet billionaire Marc Cuban to technology investor Ron Conway, who Draper somehow chanting show me the money, show me the money. (Viewer warning: This may be hazardous to your health.) She also got Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who invests heavily in alternative energy, Draper s sometimes offbeat interviewing shtick may not work for the Wolf Blitzer crowd, but it s definitely established a brand. And the hard work has paid off.
Credit: Jesse Draper, shown her in 2010, is host of The Valley Girl Show, an Internet talk show that s set to make its television debut this weekend. (Gary Reyes/Mercury News)