Tim Draper, the investor in SpaceX and Tesla, is putting his private island in Tanzania up for sale at $7.9 million.

      Tim Draper is putting his island in Lake Tanganyika up for sale at $7.9 million or the best offer, which he announced himself on X, inviting interested buyers to contact him via email. This month, the ECB reported that EU venture capital funds currently manage approximately 150 billion euros, compared to around 930 billion euros in the United States.

      Draper described his island in Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania, as “a gorgeous place, but we don’t use it enough” in a post on X on Friday. There are no brokers or listings involved; he’s accepting offers at his work email.

      The location is not a conventional trophy property. Lake Tanganyika is recognized as the longest freshwater lake in the world and second deepest after Baikal, bordered by Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Zambia.

      Draper is frequently identified as an investor in companies like SpaceX and Tesla, both of which were deals made through Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the firm he co-founded, with his partner Steve Jurvetson handling those transactions.

      His most notable investments are in different ventures, such as Skype, Hotmail, Baidu, and Coinbase, which are part of his portfolio.

      Notably, he is known for purchasing almost 30,000 bitcoins at a US Marshals auction in 2014 for about $19 million at that time's market rate, and he has stated that he did not sell them.

      This makes the asking price for the island seem modest by his standards, illustrating the value of an early investment over a twelve-year span and highlighting the advantage of those who can make such investments.

      Europe also released its own data this month, revealing that EU-based venture capital funds manage around 150 billion euros compared to roughly 930 billion euros in the United States, a difference of nearly six times.

      The gap becomes more pronounced in subsequent funding rounds, where companies seek larger investments. European scale-ups often rely on funding from outside the EU, with the ECB noting the risk that thriving startups may relocate to areas with more available capital.

      The most concerning revelation pertains to companies without venture backing. Among those firms, the average EU company is nearly twice as large in terms of employment compared to its US counterpart and grows about 15 percentage points faster. Last year, Brussels unveiled a Startup and Scaleup Strategy aimed at expanding funding opportunities.

      Furthermore, the distribution of investments had not changed significantly; the proportion of European venture capital directed towards software and IT services has stagnated since 2020.

      In late-stage European startups, employees own about half the equity that their American counterparts possess.

      None of this impacts Tim Draper directly; he is selling an island for less than half the cost of a single lot of bitcoin from 2014, while European founders are facing a shortfall of 780 billion euros.