Hanson Gifford
Investment Advisor
Mr. Gifford co-founded The Foundry in 1998. His key activities include inventing and identifying new technologies, and forming, financing, staffing, and providing ongoing support for The Foundry’s new companies.
Prior to The Foundry, Mr. Gifford was VP of R&D at Heartport. From 1993-1998, he built and led a 62-person team developing a wide variety of novel devices and procedures for minimally invasive cardiac surgery. Heartport had a successful public offering in 1996. In 1992, Mr. Gifford co-founded and served as managing director of Bavaria Medizin Technologie, GmbH, a German source of catheters for interventional cardiology. In 1990, Mr. Gifford served as President of Cardiovascular Therapeutic Technologies, which was acquired by Eli Lilly in 1991. From 1985-1990, Mr. Gifford worked at Devices for Vascular Intervention (DVI), where he served in various engineering, clinical research and marketing capacities. Before joining DVI, Hanson worked in engineering roles at Oximetrix and General Dynamics.
Mr. Gifford is a co-inventor on over 225 issued US patents. He earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. Mr. Gifford serves as Chairman of Forsight Labs, and is a Director of Miramar Labs, Twelve, Cotera, FIRE1, Forsight Vision 4 and Forsight Vision 5. He is also a Venture Partner with Lightstone Ventures.