Born in Denver, Colorado, to two parents with Doctor of Education (EdD) degrees, Mr. Smith trained as an engineer at Cornell University, earning his B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1985. In 2016, Cornell University honored Mr. Smith’s leadership by renaming the school he graduated from: Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. While earning his MBA from Columbia Business School with honors, he served as President of the Black Business Students’ Association and President of the Japan Business Association. After graduation, he worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber, followed by Kraft General Foods, where he obtained two United States and two European patents for coffee filtration systems. Upon receiving his MBA in 1994, he joined Goldman Sachs in tech investment banking, first in New York City and then in Silicon Valley. As Co‐Head of Enterprise Systems and Storage, he executed and advised on over $50 billion in merger and acquisition activity with companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, eBay and Yahoo. He was the first person at Goldman’s San Francisco office to focus solely on mergers and acquisitions of technology and software companies.

In 2000, Mr. Smith founded Vista Equity Partners to invest in businesses that develop and use technology, software and data to promote economic equity, ecological responsibility and diversity and inclusion for the prosperity of all. Vista achieves its mission of creating opportunity through the power of technology by using a variety of private equity, permanent capital and credit investment strategies.

As one of the top experts on investing in the software and technology industry in the world, Mr. Smith has been invited to speak about finance, entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership and related topics at a variety of venues, including the World Economic Forum and The Milken Institute, among others. He has also appeared in numerous interviews for television, written publications, podcasts and other media.