Travis Hawkes and the case for betting close to home

At twelve, Travis Hawkes was already on the wrong side of a customer's expectations. In his father's sports merchandise store, he could count money and make change. What he could not do was look old enough to be running the place. Customers asked, “Do you work here?” It was a sensible question with an inconvenient answer. He did.

His father, Bill, had opened a Pro Image Sports franchise. The family business gave Travis a childhood education in customers, stock and the cash register. By junior high, he was handling posters: buying them, displaying them and keeping them replenished. The glamorous part of commerce apparently arrived later.

The store also gave him time with his parents. His mother worked on window displays; his father kept working alongside him. Sports fandom and business ownership developed together. In 2005, Hawkes proposed a store devoted entirely to Boise State merchandise. A narrowly focused shop requires a broad enough crowd. He was willing to make that bet on his hometown's team.

A partnership before a portfolio

Hawkes met David K. Gardner while both were business students at Boise State University. Their relationship became the foundation of Capital Eleven, which they established in 2009. The starting point was building businesses themselves. That history matters when considering the firm Hawkes now leads as CEO and managing partner: operating companies sit alongside investments in other founders.

Seed-stage venture investing came later, in January 2019. The distinction keeps the chronology honest. Capital Eleven did not spend its entire existence as a startup fund. Its founders had been entrepreneurs and operators before they formally began backing early-stage companies. They carried that experience into a business that asks them to judge somebody else's plans.

The firm subsequently added teams for real estate investment and development and private equity acquisitions. Early in 2025, it launched Capital Eleven Advisors for M&A, strategic advice and corporate finance. These are different kinds of work with different demands. Hawkes's career has accumulated responsibilities rather than resolving into a single, tidy specialty. The title fits on a business card. The work needs more room.

Retail returns, this time as software

One investment brings his early working life into particularly clear focus. In July 2023, Fitted announced an $8.5 million Series A led by Capital Eleven, with Epic Ventures and Handshake Ventures participating. Based in Eagle, Idaho, Fitted works on the connection between brands and retailers, including wholesale orders and payments.

A shop floor is the visible end of a much longer chain. Behind a display are invoices, payment terms, orders and decisions about what to stock. Fitted's proposition concerns that less photogenic side of retail: giving businesses digital tools and financial information so they can transact more smoothly. For someone who learned commerce through buying and merchandising, the subject has a recognizable shape.

Hawkes publicly backed the team's vision and ability to carry it out. The investment provides a concrete example of his overlap between operating experience and venture capital. The setting has changed from a store to a software platform. The underlying concern remains familiar: how businesses do business with one another, and how much friction gets in their way.

An investor who wants more investors

A regional investor might be expected to guard the territory. Hawkes has expressed a rather different preference. In 2022, he welcomed other funds coming to Boise and described co-investors as additional sources of money, expertise and mentorship. A founder gains another person to ask, another network to enter and, potentially, another way to finance the next stage.

He also described a willingness to meet Boise entrepreneurs even when an investment was unlikely. Some needed advice; some needed an introduction to somebody else. A meeting could still be useful. The approach makes sense in a community where a referral may matter long after a particular pitch has been declined.

There is a practical argument here about scale. If every investor must supply every answer alone, a small market quickly meets its limits. Shared deals and introductions can spread the work. Hawkes's enthusiasm for company in the market suggests that he sees Boise's opportunity as larger than any one firm's portfolio. Competition can coexist with a second thought: a founder doing well with another fund can still be good news for the place.

“I hope five more VC funds move to Boise.”Travis Hawkes, 2022

Grit, with permission to change course

In a 2023 Idaho Technology Council video, the quality attached to Hawkes's investment approach was persistence. The emphasis was on entrepreneurs who could recover from setbacks and keep working. At that point, the council described Capital Eleven as having invested in forty startups, nearly thirty of them in Idaho. Those figures belong to that moment, rather than serving as a running total today.

By his May 2025 conversation with Josh Lustig, the discussion included more than seventy startup investments. It also included an earlier disappointment: a spa franchise inside Walmart. A venture investor willing to discuss a failed business gives founders something more useful than an immaculate résumé. The experience puts a cost against the language of grit.

His investor preferences in that conversation included strong teams, coachability and execution under pressure. Persistence alone cannot answer all three tests. A team must also absorb information, adjust and do the work. For a founder, this is a demanding combination: maintain enough conviction to continue, while staying receptive enough to notice when the original plan needs repairs.

In a separate 2020 interview, Hawkes spoke about accepting failure and the temptation to cling to a business because admitting defeat is uncomfortable. That adds a qualification to the perseverance theme. Continuing deserves judgment. A founder can work hard and still need to stop, rethink or redirect effort. His advice leaves room for that less triumphant, often necessary decision.

Culture has more than one audience

Hawkes uses a compact phrase for his approach to relationships: “culture points all directions.” Inside Capital Eleven, that extends the idea of company culture beyond colleagues. Founders, investors, partners, customers, vendors and the surrounding community are part of the picture. The people outside an organization's payroll still experience its habits.

His advisory work has also extended beyond his own firm. In November 2023, Idaho’s Department of Finance named him to its Emerging Technology Advisory Committee, part of the department’s Financial Innovation Lab. The group was assembled to help the department understand technological changes in finance. For an investor with experience operating businesses, it offered another setting in which to discuss how new ideas work in practice.

There is also some welcome comedy in his public accounts of professional life. In September 2025, he appeared on Contio's meeting-themed podcast with two examples of meetings gone badly. The premise is familiar to anyone who has watched a calendar invitation consume an afternoon. Even a career built on relationships produces encounters worth retelling for the wrong reasons.

Sun Valley, with work on the agenda

Capital is easier to describe than the relationships around it. Hawkes has put time into creating places where those relationships can begin. He originated Capital Eleven's Founder Series in 2023 and co-chairs the annual Seed to Growth Conference in Sun Valley. The scenery is an advantage. It does not make the introductions by itself.

In July 2024, he and StageDotO's Matt Puopolo discussed the conference and Idaho investing on Found in the Rockies. Their conversation connected the region's opportunities to the practical problems founders face: accessing capital, building businesses that can scale and finding a credible route toward profitability. They also discussed capital efficiency and the value of meeting people in person.

He has made the wider argument in print, too. An October 2024 opinion column connected private equity and venture investment to Idaho businesses and jobs. The argument was explicitly local: policies and capital shape what businesses can build in the state. It helps explain why he spends time on the community around investments as well as on the investments themselves.

For Hawkes, the geography is deliberate. Capital Eleven focuses on Idaho and the Mountain West while also investing across the United States. Local commitment and a national network can support one another. A founder based in Idaho need not build only for Idaho, and an investor based in Meridian need not stop at the state line.

Two kinds of homecoming

In February 2026, Boise State's College of Business and Economics recognized Hawkes with an Outstanding Alumni Award. He was honored alongside Susan Olson and Brent K. Moylan. For a Boise native who earned his business degree there, it brought the university relationship into another phase: from student, to entrepreneur, to alumnus whose work is held up to students.

The personal details attached to the occasion are refreshingly ordinary. Hawkes lives in Meridian with his wife and three children. He likes steak tacos and sneakers. His affection for Boise State also appears well beyond an alumni biography. Team colors have been part of his working life, through the retail businesses, for years.

Another milestone took him into a national institution. On May 14, 2026, the National Venture Capital Association announced Hawkes among ten incoming directors, each appointed for a 2026-2030 term. In his own announcement, he described himself as the first Idaho-based person to serve on the board and framed the appointment as a voice for the state's technology community.

The board class arrived as Kickstart founder Gavin Christensen became chair for 2026-2027. For Hawkes, the opportunity was to represent work taking place in Idaho in discussions about federal policy and industry standards. It widened the audience for a regional concern he had already spent years discussing: how founders outside the familiar centers of venture capital get heard.

The shop door still opens

The retail thread continues. In September 2026, a new Blue and Orange Store soft-opened in downtown Boise, in the former Rediscovered Books space. Hawkes is a co-owner of the retail business alongside Brandon Miner and Klay Frongner. The approximately 4,000-square-foot location carries Boise State merchandise and professional-team gear under the Blue and Orange and Pro Image Sports brands.

The explanation for opening it was wonderfully concrete. Selling at Boise State games had increased the business's inventory. Another shop offered another place to sell it. A business expansion can begin with merchandise that needs somewhere to go, rather than a grand declaration about the future.

Earlier that summer, Hawkes had returned to the BoiseDev podcast to discuss the local startup scene, Micron's potential impact and the evolution of the Blue and Orange Store. The subjects fit together in his career: the region's industrial prospects, its young companies and a shop that serves its football fans.

There is a straight line through those otherwise varied commitments. He keeps returning to businesses and people connected to the place where he grew up. Today the conversations involve funds, founders and national policy. Somewhere in the same working life, there are still customers, stock and team colors. The twelve-year-old behind the counter would recognize at least that part.