Biography
Robert L. Foster -- Background Summary
For the last several years Foster has been a “hired gun” for venture capital investors who retain Foster to ramp revenues for startup portfolio companies via sales and business development. The most recent company is Enexity, with Rackspace and Apogee Telecom being two other successful previous business development contracts. Foster joined Vincera November 1, 2006; as Director – Western Region. Vincera sells a Document and Digital Asset e-Forensics and Security System.
Foster is past-President of iNetProfit, an Austin-based, business-to-business startup software company that he seed-funded and founded in May of 1999; iNetProfit launched its completed enterprise solution software in October of 2000. iNetProfit was nominated for the KPMG ICE Awards, and was invited to Oracle’s OpenWorld 2000 to demonstrate its proprietary use of Oracle’s database software. iNetProfit was acquired by ReachForce in 2006.
Previous to his venture capital endeavors Foster spent seventeen years with IBM in a variety of sales, development engineering, management, education and business planning positions, including Corporate Strategy Advisor for World Trade Americas/Far East, and Division Manager of Systems Strategy. Foster was required to sell the IBM Corporation Board of Directors in order to receive development funding. In the late 1990’s and prior to 9/11, Foster was ranked by the Austin Business Journal as the tenth most active Angel investor in Austin, Texas.
Subsequent to his career with IBM, Foster was Division President of Retail Development and Marketing for Nash Phillips/Copus, a $500,000,000 privately held commercial and residential real estate development firm.
Foster was on the Board of Directors of the Paramount Theater for six years, was a Founder and served on the Board of Directors of the Austin Downtown Management Corporation for eight years (now the Downtown Austin Alliance, or DAA, a taxing district that improves Downtown Austin). As the DAA’s founding Vice Chair, Foster was on the core team responsible for creating the taxing district that funds the Alliance, and in fact wrote the business and financial Service Plan for the City of Austin that facilitated the formation of the taxing district.
He served on the Hispanic Chamber Board, and is currently serving on the Board of the Hispanic Technology Incubator of Austin. Foster speaks conversational Spanish, and in July 2003 was invited to speak to the Research Staff at the University of Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, Mexico, regarding the commercialization of their patents.
Foster has served on the Board of the Association of Corporate Growth, and he has been active with the Austin Software Council. He joined the Colorado Springs Chapter of ISSA in November of 2006.
Links to newspaper articles re Mr. Foster’s endeavors are listed below (Ctrl + Right Click):
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/news/chicon_nc.htm
MAYOR WATSON, FOSTER, GARCIA AT INCUBATOR RIBBON CUTTING
http://www.amcity.com/austin/stories/1997/03/10/tidbits.html?h=Bob|Foster
BIG NAMES BIG MONEY: $24,000,000 Mezzanine Fund Created
http://www.amcity.com/austin/stories/1998/01/19/story4.html?h=Bob|Foster
LOCAL HISPANIC FUND
http://www.amcity.com/austin/stories/1999/04/12/story2.html
MERCADO FOSTERING GROWTH
http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/1999/12/13/focus2.html?page=2
BIOTECH PROMOTION
http://www.amcity.com/austin/stories/1997/09/01/story3.html?h=Bob|Foster
$700,000 FOR HR
http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2001/08/06/story4.html
Harte-Hanks Closed: $7,000,000
http://www.amcity.com/austin/stories/1997/05/05/focus5.html?h=Bob|Foster
SAN DIEGO ESTATES – REED PARK RD
http://www.amcity.com/austin/stories/1999/04/12/editorial2.html
WALKING THE STREETS OF EAST AUSTIN
