Like it or not, money makes this world go around. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen many African Americans master the game of economics unless they were an athlete or an entertainer. However, this stigma doesn’t apply to all wealthy black people.
Meet Mr. Robert Smith, the CEO and founder of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity fund that has grown to nearly $16 billion in assets since it began 15 years ago. Private equity funds buy and invest in other companies, so there are no athletic or entertainment tie to Smith like Bob Johnson. Johnson was a billionaire before splitting half his wealth with his wife in a divorce.
Oprah, Michael Jordan and Dr. Dre are billionaires also, but their wealth came from entertainment or chiefly derived from their athletic prowess.
Smith recently graced the cover of Forbes magazine as the No. 268th wealthiest American. His estimated net worth of $2.5 billion dollars places him comfortably among the top 1% in this country.
Smith graduated with an undergraduate decgree from Cornell in chemical engineering and got a Masters of Business Administration from Columbia University, then went to straight to Wall Street to work for Goldman Sachs.
Like most entrepreneurs, his former colleagues and friends thought he was crazy for leaving Goldman Sachs to start his own company after massive success at the investment banking firm.
“When I left my post at Goldman Sachs just after we had gone public to set up a private equity firm called Vista Equity Partners … my mentors and colleagues at Goldman thought I had lost it,” he said in his speech earlier this year.
“I was never mad at those folks, in fact I’m grateful for their advice and concern. In their caution, I found my courage. In their doubts, I found my resolve. In their warnings, I found my voice and chartered my own journey.”
It’s a good think he persisted and continued to follow his dream of making his own way. Today, Robert Smith and Vista Equity Partners are one of the most well respected private equity funds on the planet and we wish him nothing but success in the future.
Source: Business Insider
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Black youth as well as th entire community knew about the richest Black people for the past, 100 years ntil the past 30 years, cause like other ethnic groups, that actually got the idea from us, those millionaires did much right there in the black communities that every one could see and appreciate! All that ended when COINTELPRO invented Balling culture and infected that Ebola into the psyche of the Black community in the late 80s, so now unlike Madam C J Walker, Rev Adam Clayton Powell Sr, John H Johnson, Berry Gordy, Bill Cosby, Otis Redding …Black youth today see no manifestation of todays millionaires or billionaires in the community! We have who knows how many Billionaires and near billionaires right now, and who knows how many Millionaires , ye t we are catching hell from White Supremacy, as if the entire Black movements of the 60s and 70s never occurred ! And that is sad cause all the above mentioned millionaires as well as others , donated and contributed to the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Nationalist Movements!