Patrick Blumenthal

Hi, I'm Patrick. I invest in early-stage startups at Draper Associates, and I'm doing a Master's in Entrepreneurship at Cambridge alongside it.

I grew up in Maienfeld, a village in the Swiss mountains famous for the children's book Heidi. At 16 I became an IT apprentice at a local startup. I wrote software and ran servers. I liked building enough that I started my own company on the side while I was studying Business Information Technology.

An exchange semester in Silicon Valley changed what I thought was possible. There I interned at Stampli while it raised a $61M Series D, and at Bay Angels, one of the oldest angel groups in the Valley.

Back in Switzerland I helped Alex Fries build the accelerator InnoQube from scratch. We brought 20 startups from around the world to Switzerland for two months. At the same time I worked for his VC firm, Ecosystem Ventures. Alex taught me most of what I know about startups and investing, and he broke my Swiss habit of planning everything before starting.

Then Draper, where I invest today. I still build. I co-founded BridgeFellows, a non-profit that brings founders from Oxford and Cambridge to Silicon Valley. In July 2026 I took 14 of them to the Bay for a week. They pitched 9 funds such as YC, Pear VC and Plug and Play, visited NVIDIA, Microsoft and Airwallex, and had sessions with founders like Jean-Philippe Fricker (Cerebras) and Celine Halioua (Loyal).

I love the mountains (skiing and hiking), sports (especially soccer, squash, floorball and running), travelling (27 countries so far), video (I ran a video agency for four years), and music (especially Genesis and Eminem).

If you're into any of this, or you're building something, write to me.

Writing

Occasionally I write things down:

• Do you actually need to move to Silicon Valley? August 2026

Portfolio

Some of my angel investments:

• EndiatxSeed

  Micro robots that swim through your body and perform surgery from the inside.

• RavenSeed

  A computer you wear on your face and control with your eyes.

• KalosSeed

  Turning the human body into a system you can measure and upgrade.

• WardstoneSeed

  Satellites that destroy hypersonic missiles with clouds of metal.

• Car IQSeries A (acq. Element)

  Giving every vehicle on the road its own bank account.

Book recommendations

Currently reading The Book of Elon, Eric Jorgenson.

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Eric Jorgenson · 5/5
  A guide to building wealth and finding peace without giving up either.
• Six Easy Pieces Richard Feynman · 4/5
  Nobody explains hard things as simply as he does.
• The Lessons of History Will & Ariel Durant · 4/5
  Two historians spent fifty years writing the history of the world, then compressed it into a hundred pages.
• Skin in the Game Nassim Taleb · 5/5
  Don't listen to anyone who doesn't lose something when they're wrong.
• Antifragile Nassim Taleb · 4/5
  Build systems that get stronger when things go wrong.
• Zero to One Peter Thiel · 4/5
  Competition is for losers. Build something nobody else is building.
• Ego is the Enemy Ryan Holiday · 4/5
  A warning about the quiet arrogance that kills ambition before it starts.
• Venture Deals Brad Feld · 4/5
  The clearest explanation of how term sheets, valuations and cap tables actually work.
• Tao of Charlie Munger David Clark · 5/5
  Charlie Munger's wisdom, summarised.
• How to be the Startup Hero Tim Draper · 4/5
  An unfiltered manifesto on why founders should think like heroes on a mission.

Elsewhere

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