Robert F. Smith (investor)

Smith was born to Dr. William Robert Smith and Dr. Sylvia Myrna Smith, who were both school teachers.[6] He grew up in a predominantly African American, middle-class neighborhood in Denver, Colorado.[6] When he was an infant, his mother carried him at the March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.[7] He attended Carson Elementary School and East High School[8] in Denver.[6][9]

In high school, he applied for an internship at Bell Labs but was told the program was intended for college students. Smith persisted, calling each Monday for five months. When a student from M.I.T. did not show up, he got the position, and that summer he developed a reliability test for semiconductors.[10][11] Smith earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University in 1985.[12] At Cornell, he became a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha.[13] In 1994, he received his Master of Business Administration from Columbia University with concentrations in finance and marketing.[6][14][15]

Smith worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Air Products & Chemicals and later at Kraft General Foods as a chemical engineer,[6] where he earned two United States and two European patents.[16] From 1994 to 2000, he worked for Goldman Sachs in technology investment banking, first in New York City and then in Silicon Valley.[6] He advised on mergers and acquisition activity with companies such as Apple and Microsoft.[17] In 2018, Smith was included in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment List, which is an annual ranking of individuals who have made impactful business innovations.[2][18]

In 2000, Smith founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm of which he is the principal founder, chairman and chief executive. As of 2019, Vista has over $46 billion in cumulative capital commitments, owns over 50 software companies and has 60,000 employees worldwide,[19][20] making it the fourth largest enterprise software company after Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.[21] Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology sectors. Among Vista's portfolio companies are Finastra, TIBCO, Solera, Infoblox, Mediaocean, Vertafore, Ping Identity, Lithium, Cvent, EAB and Datto.

In October 2014, Vista closed its Fund V at $5.8 billion.[22]

In January 2015, Vista Equity Partners was named the best performing private equity firm for the previous 10 years, according to the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg.[23] Preqin, a consulting firm that tracks the industry, reports that Vista's third fund returned $2.46 for every dollar invested, better than every other big fund raised between 2006 and 2010, the boom years for private equity.[11]

In 2017, Vista Equity Partners was reported to have $30 billion under management,[24] and Smith was named as Private Equity International's 2016 Game Changer of the Year.[25]

In May 2019, Vista Equity Partners put in a bid to buy Kantar, the data analytics business owned by WPP.[26]

The 2019 PitchBook Private Equity Awards named Vista Equity Partners 'Dealmaker of the Year' in recognition of its "especially notable" performance "as it completed a series of huge deals, raised its largest fund to date and —in a first —took a portfolio company public."[27]

Smith is the board chairman of Carnegie Hall; he is the first African American to hold that position.[28]

Smith is the founding director and president of the Fund II Foundation.[29] Under his leadership, Fund II Foundation has invested in organizations such as Cornell, UNCF, National Park Foundation, Susan G. Komen, and Global Wildlife Conservation, among many others.[30]

He is the chairman of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights,[31] serves on the board of overseers of Columbia Business School, as a member of the Cornell Engineering College Council,[32] and a Trustee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco.[33]

In 2018, Smith was the largest individual donor at the City of Hope Gala, earmarking funds towards prostate cancer treatment for black men and for breast cancer research for black women.[34] Smith also donated $2.5 million to the Prostate Cancer Foundation to advance prostate cancer research among African-American men.[35] Also in 2018, Smith donated $1 million to the Cultural Performance Center at the Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park in Harlem, which was subsequently named the Robert Frederick Smith Center for Performing Arts in recognition of his gift.[36]

Smith was named as one of the "Philanthropy 50" by The Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2017.[37] In May 2017, The Giving Pledge announced that Smith had joined its ranks as its first African-American signatory.[38] Smith is a member of the board of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, the only authentically preserved home of a jazz musician in the country, which manages the Louis Armstrong Research Collections, the largest single jazz musician archive in the world. With Smith's leadership at the Fund II Foundation, the museum has digitized the entire collection Armstrong left behind and made it available to the public.[39]

In 2016, Cornell University recognized Smith's leadership by naming the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering after him.[40]

Among the honors and awards Smith has received are the Candle in Business and Philanthropy Award from Morehouse College,[41] the International Medical Corps Humanitarian of the Year Award,[42] Ebony’s John H. Johnson Award,[43] the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Chairman's Award,[44] the Reginald F. Lewis Achievement Award, the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Robert Toigo Foundation, and the Ripple of Hope Award from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Smith was also awarded an honorary doctorate of International Affairs from American University's School of International Service[45] and an honorary doctorate from Morehouse College.[46]

In October 2019, Smith received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, recognizing him as one of “the most charitable and visionary philanthropists in the world”.[47] Smith was also inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame as a Class of 2019 Legend in recognition of the “profound impact he made on the State’s economic growth”, as well as using his resources and influence to “better his community”.[48]

In May 2019, when he was at Morehouse College to receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the commencement address, he told the graduates he and his family would pay off the entire student loan debt of the 2019 Morehouse College graduating class of 396 students.[49][50] "This is my class", he told the graduating seniors, "and I know my class will pay this forward".[46][51] He had previously donated $1.5 million to the school in January 2019, to be used for scholarships and a park.[52]

In April 2020, Governor Greg Abbott named Smith to the Strike Force to Open Texas – a group "tasked with finding safe and effective ways to slowly reopen the state" amid the COVID-19 pandemic.[53]

In 1988, Smith married his first wife, fellow Cornell alum Suzanne McFayden Smith. They were married for 22 years before they separated in 2010; their divorce was finalized in 2014.

Smith has three children with his first wife Suzanne: Zoe Smith; Eliana Smith; and Max Smith.[54]

On 25 July 2015 (2015-07-25), Smith married his second wife, Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy playmate, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor.[55][56]

Smith has two sons with his second wife Hope: Hendrix Robert Smith, born on (2014-12-19) December 19, 2014; and Legend Robert Smith, born on (2016-03-16) March 16, 2016.[57][58]

Smith owns a home in Austin, Texas,[59] a home in Malibu, California that he bought for US$19.5 million from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Hadid Foster, and a home in New York City he bought for US$59 million.[60]