Frank Foster

Frank Foster is the Managing General Partner of the Gideon Hixon Fund, the early-stage venture arm of the Hixon family — a sixth-generation family enterprise whose roots trace back to 1850. He has been a General Partner of the fund since its founding in 1990 and its Managing General Partner since 2004. Alongside the fund, he served as Chairman of Hixon Properties, Inc. from 2013 to 2022 and is now its Chairman Emeritus, overseeing the family's real-estate and investment interests.

Before and during his family-office work, Foster built a career as an operator and institutional venture investor. He is a Managing Director associated with DFJ Frontier / Frontier Venture Capital (a Draper Fisher Jurvetson–affiliated seed and early-stage fund), and previously was a General Partner at the Australian venture firm Allen & Buckeridge, which managed roughly A$250 million. His operating and advisory history includes Virtual Music Entertainment (acquired by Namco), Contexture Systems, Prophecy Development Corporation, consulting for YellowPages.com through its 2004 sale to SBC/BellSouth, and steering Cogent Data Technologies to its 1996 acquisition by Adaptec.

Foster earned a BA cum laude from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has taught entrepreneurship and family business at Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly, and Portland State University. In philanthropy and governance, he is Chairman Emeritus and a longtime trustee of the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara and serves on its investment committee.

More recently, Foster has focused on family-enterprise succession. He founded and led the creation of the Legacy Center for Family Business Leadership at Pepperdine's Graziadio Business School through a seven-figure lead gift; the center's accredited master's program (including the "Strong Rope" program adapted from the Hixon family's internal training) welcomed its first class in Fall 2025. He is also Executive Chairman of Generation Transition Advisors, a family-business consultancy.

• Invests through an evergreen fund structure with both direct startup investments (20+) and fund/LP investments (20+), rather than a fixed-life traditional VC fund.
• Current thesis centers on "innovation affecting real estate" (IARE) — proptech, traveltech/hospitality, insurtech, and mobility — after refining away from an earlier life-sciences and cleantech emphasis.
• Concentrates on seed and early-stage companies (~75% of the portfolio), with additional exposure via managers running funds under ~$100M.
• Generally does not lead rounds; participates in syndicates and takes board seats selectively, positioning itself "somewhere in between" active and passive.
• Leverages the family's operating assets as a differentiator: *"As a real estate family, with multiple property types and concentration in one area (South Texas) we believe we can help bring real market insights and customers to the companies we work with."*
• Guiding philosophy from the firm: *"an investment is an alignment, and the best success is a shared one"* — favoring "companies we know and like, along with partners we respect and trust."