Pitch Johnson

Franklin Pitcher (“Pitch”) Johnson was co-founder in 1962 of Draper and Johnson Investment Company, venture capital company, and became an independent venture capitalist in 1965 as the founder of Asset Management Company. Asset Management Company has made over 250 venture investments during its more than 50 years of operation. These have included Amgen, Applied Bio Systems, Applied Micro Circuits, Conductus, Hybritech, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Octel, Qume, Red Brick Systems, Remedy, Sierra Semiconductor, Tandem Computer, Teradyne and Verity. He was a director of many of those companies and is presently a director of three private companies, and a public investment fund operating in eastern Europe. He is also a past director of the National Venture Capital Association, a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists, and was a trustee of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District for 12 years. He also taught a class in entrepreneurship and venture capital at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for 12 years and is still active on the faculty there. He has served as an advisor to several eastern European countries since 1990 in the area of entrepreneurship and privatization, and has helped form venture funds in several countries. He is active in educational and cultural affairs and served as chairman of the board of San Francisco Opera from 1999-2008. Pitch has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.