Robert F. Smith
The Strategist
The long view, patient, analytical, playing several moves ahead.
Robert F. Smith reads as The Strategist because his career is analytical precision deployed at the longest range. He identified software as a structurally undervalued asset class before institutional consensus arrived, then built Vista Equity Partners around a proprietary operating model that treats software businesses as systems to be optimised.
“Because when we're going to move from a small and to medium business to an enterprise, we need to have the ability to scale our product with fewer deficiencies and frankly at the end of the day, fewer bugs so that it has higher reliability, which you can then drive across an enterprise.”
“Every year, just to give you a point of example across all of our portfolio companies. And today, the average ROI return on investment of the products that we sell to our customers. So this is the customer's benefit. It's over 600%.”
“I learned a lot of things, and there's three lessons, and I'm going to give them to you that I give my kids. And I'll tell you the one that I learned late in life. The first one is you are enough. You are enough to solve the problems that you focus on and be the person you want to be. And I tell my kids that kind of every day.”
“Become more profitable. So when you start to realize that not very many folks at that time in the private equity industry were actually focused on that space, I said, this is one that you could actually create a sustainable competitive advantage for something we all learn in business school by approaching one market, becoming an expert in…”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Robert F. Smith”
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