Robert Smith

Executive Vice President & Chief Risk Officer, NMI Holdings, Inc.

Search every verified Robert Smith interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Robert F. Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, has discussed the state of the technology industry and proposed a private-sector initiative to address structural racism. At the 2023 World Economic Forum, Smith said that tech companies are "ratcheting down" their expense bases after a period of unsustainable pandemic-era growth, and predicted a "new equilibrium" in the second or third quarter of 2023. He described enterprise software spending as having fluctuated in 2022, with a strong first quarter followed by declines in the second and third quarters and a rebound in the fourth quarter. Smith stated that productivity software would be a principal area of growth in 2023. In a 2020 interview with Forbes, Smith outlined a "2% solution" in which large corporations would allocate 2% of their annual net income over ten years to Community Development Financial Institutions and minority-owned banks. He argued that this would address what he called "structural racism" in corporate America, particularly in the deprivation of capital to African-American and Latinx communities. Smith said that activating the wealth and income of the African-American community to the average level of white Americans could increase U.S. GDP by $1.5 trillion per year. He also stated that default rates in underserved communities are lower than the FDIC average, calling investment in these markets "good business."