Ever hear of Robert F. Smith? He’s been in the news lately since appearing on Forbes’ 2015 list of billionaires. He ranks at number 268 on the annual list of the richest Americans, has a personal fortune of $2.5 billion and is counted as the second richest African American person in the nation after Oprah Winfrey.
A Denver, Colorado native, Smith, 52, is the founder, chairman and chief executive of the Austin, Texas-based Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm with assets in the billions.
And by Forbes’ account, the company has “made a killing in enterprise software.”
Smith, who earned a chemical engineering degree from Cornell University and a business degree from Columbia University, owns more than 50% of Vista which was recently valued at $4.3 billion. (You do the math.)
