Jurvetson's father Tõnu Jürvetson fled Estonia through Germany just before Soviet re-occupation in 1944. Tõnu was married to another Estonian immigrant, Tiiu Tia Jürvetson. Even though within the family, the Estonian language was used, Steve never learned it and his parents used it as a secret language between themselves. Steve Jurvetson was the first non-European to become an e-resident of Estonia. Jurvetson grew up in Dallas, where he graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas in 1985. At Stanford University, Jurvetson finished his degree in electrical engineering in 2.5 years and graduated No. 1 in his class. He then earned an M.S. in electrical engineering and an M.B.A., also from Stanford. His first job out of Stanford was working as an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard. After two years at HP, he moved on as a product marketer at Apple and then NeXT Software. Jurvetson was named to the MIT TR35in 1999 for "recognize young entrepreneurs who can deliver", including making the first investment in Hotmail.
Career
As a consultant with Bain & Company, Jurvetson developed executive marketing, sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of companies in the software, networking, and semiconductor industries. He first joined DFJ after his second year of business school, and became a partner after proving his talent on several investments. Jurvetson was named to Forbes' "Midas List" of Tech's Top Investors in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016. He was a board member of Synthetic Genomics, Planet Labs, Nervana Systems, Flux, D-Wave, SpaceX, and Tesla. He also led the firm's investments in Tradex and Cyras. Also in 2016, President Barack Obama appointed Jurvetson as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. DFJ was an early financial backer of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. On November 13, 2017, Jurvetson stepped down from his role at DFJ Venture Capital in addition to taking leave from the boards of SpaceX and Tesla following an internal DFJ investigation into rumors of sexual harassment. While the findings of the investigation were not made public, anonymous sources alleged that the investigation "uncovered behaviors by Jurvetson that were unacceptable related to a negative tone toward women entrepreneurs." Jurvetson stated that stepping down from his role was unrelated to the allegations, writing "I am leaving DFJ to focus on personal matters" on a statement posted to Twitter. Jurvetson cofounded a new venture fund, Future Ventures, in April of 2018. The inaugural $200M venture capital fund focuses on environmentally sustainable transportation, food technology and high power computer systems.
