Franklin Pitcher Johnson Jr.
venture capitalist and entrepreneur (born 1928)
Franklin Pitcher Johnson Jr., or Pitch Johnson, (born 1928) is an American venture capitalist and founder of multiple companies.
Personal life
Franklin Pitcher Johnson Jr. was born in 1928 in Quincy, Illinois, and is the son of Franklin Pitcher "Pitch" Johnson, an Olympic track and field athlete and college coach. When he was 12 years old his family moved to Palo Alto, California. He studied at the Palo Alto High School where he ran on the track team. According to Johnson Jr., he was not as good at running as his father. Despite that, according to him, he has learned a lot of things from his father, "My dad taught me to shake hands with my opponents after the race, win or lose."
Johnson Jr. studied mechanical engineering at Stanford University (1946–50). After attending Harvard Business School (1950–52) he joined the US Air Force (1952–54) as an aircraft maintenance officer and worked in the Inland Steel Company's Indiana Harbor Works.
He has a wife Catherine, three sons, and one daughter.
The public source identifies “Franklin Pitcher Johnson Jr.” as venture capitalist and entrepreneur (born 1928). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Franklin, Pitcher and Johnson.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5491758. VIAF identifies the subject as 68047253. The Library of Congress control number is n88636133. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1946, 1950 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Franklin Pitcher Johnson Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.