- In an interview with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Vista Equity founder and CEO Robert F. Smith discussed creating opportunities for the community
Recently, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman interviewed the Vista Equity Partners CEO and founder Robert F. Smith on the “Masters of Scale” podcast. The episode was recorded live at Summit LA: and the theme of the episode was about how every great founder has a second purpose, which is something outside their main business that they are trying to get done in the world.
Smith told Hoffman that the beauty of growing up in a community was the opportunity to really participate in the values of that community.
“I was fortunate in growing up in a community that thought about each other. They thought about the children in that community, the elders in that community, and those who are working. And we worked together. I saw that reflected in the way that when we’d come home from school, if parents were working, that other parents who were not working would take those young kids – not just welcomed them into their home, but assist them with their homework, ensure they had nutritious snacks until their parents came home,” said Smith. “I saw it when it was time for me to start my businesses of mowing lawns and shoveling snow, that after I did my parents, I had to go do Mrs. Busby’s and Mr. Moore’s free before I could go make money by doing other yard work. And it showed me that you have a responsibility to your community in ways that you have to constantly think about it, and it has to be inculcated in your very fabric and in your very being, not as an activity that you do. So the advantage I think that I had in growing up in that community was I found that joy. And that joy comes quite naturally through that process.”
Smith grew up in an African American neighborhood in Colorado. And as a child, he was bused to a white school as part of desegregation efforts.
“Bus 13 and I was seven years old and it was first grade. My first day, I remember I had to walk down to the end of the… My older brothers were with me, walked down to the end of the block, get on the bus, and drive for 35, 40 minutes. Seemed like forever. To now walk into a community of students that looked nothing like the kids I was accustomed to. But like all things, the thing we figured out was ‘guess what?’ We had more alike than we had different,” added Smith. “We all liked to do things like run fast and have fun and tell jokes. And over time we realized that we were now a community of students. And we didn’t see each other through the lens of color, we didn’t see another lens of economic position. But we saw each other as friends. And I just remember going to birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, all those sorts of things, as time went on, as we grew up. And it created a wonderful connectivity as a human and as a human being. Those are the things that helped me realize that again, we are more alike than different. That was a big part of my upbringing.”
Smith’s generation was the first of African Americans that have all their rights in this country after multiple generations of being here with the Civil Rights Act 1965. Smith was born a few years before that and the dynamic that changed him later was finding out that there were a number of buses that were to really force the desegregation process in the schools. Someone had burned one-third of the buses before all of that started and the only one bus that came to his neighborhood and only four or five blocks of kids got an opportunity to be on that bus — which was bus number 13.
Smith said that there is a vast difference in social-economic progress and in educational opportunities between the kids who were on the bus compared to the kids who were just one block away.
“And as I’ve kept in touch with them as his childhood friends do, you see a stark difference from kids who are maybe two and three and four blocks away or eight blocks away who didn’t get an opportunity to get on that one bus. And so you start to realize the importance of fundamental education and caring communities that realize it’s important to educate all the citizenry in a way that they can then contribute – because if you don’t, then they no longer contribute and then you have issues you now have to deal with in different ways, as opposed to enabling young people to be effective citizens in their communities,” commented Smith.
Smith had attended college at Cornell as a chemical engineer. And he also earned several patents, earned an MBA, and became an investment banker. While working for Goldman Sachs, Smith helped the financial firm open its office in San Francisco and he helped bring Steve Jobs back to Apple. Smith went on to launch Vista Equity Partners, which now has 68 portfolio companies and over 70,000 employees.
Earlier this year, Smith gave a commencement speech at Morehouse College where he discussed what it was like getting bused across town to a predominantly white school in Southeast Denver.
“Men of Morehouse, you are surrounded by a community of people who have helped you arrive at this sacred place and on this sacred day. On behalf of the eight generations of my family who have been in this country, we’re going to put a little fuel in your bus. Now I’ve got the alumni over there, and this is the challenge to you alumni. This is my class, 2019. And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans. Now, I know my class will make sure they pay this forward. And I want my class to look at these alumnus, these beautiful Morehouse brothers, and let’s make sure every class has the same opportunity going forward,” stated Smith during the commencement speech.
By announcing he would pay the student loans of the class along with the student loans of their parents, Smith changed history and really raised the bar.
Why did Smith decide to pay the tuition of the students?
“Again, it’s coming from a community that cared about each other. I just actually, as you know, arrived from South Africa a few hours ago and was reminded of that by a beautiful talented woman who was actually the widow of Stephen Bilko. And we had lunch, we talked about this concept of Ubuntu, which is the love of humanity. If you think about it, philanthropy is the love of humanity. And when you think about your community, how do you love your community? You share in the bounty with that community. In some cases it’s the wisdom, it’s the teachings. Some cases it’s the time. It’s nourishment in some cases, in some cases it’s a bed for someone to sleep on or gentle words of encouragement,” Smith reminisced during the interview. “And when I think about my community, which has multiple layers to it, and I thought about that Morehouse community of these young African American men who have an unfair burden in this country on so many different levels, and I thought, how can I help them with burdens that I can help with? One way is to alleviate the debt, not only for them on them, but the debt that most of them are also responsible on their families. And to give them a chance to liberate themselves in their communities through their actions, as opposed to walking out $40-50,000 dollars in debt, having to take a job to service the debt, and 20 years later not having had a chance to really deliver what their hearts and minds say are the right first purpose, into the community that they came from.”
