Sanford “Sandy” Robertson, the pioneering Silicon Valley financier whose preliminary public choices helped flip a sleepy Northern California peninsula into a worldwide financial powerhouse, has died at age 93.
Robertson was one of many earliest bankers to sense the potential of technological improvements rising from the suburbs south of San Francisco within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, at a time when main New York funding banks evinced little curiosity within the high-risk and little-known innovations that might come to dominate each facet of recent life.
He and a handful of like-minded cash males launched boutique funding banks catering to the rising trade, collectively turning into often known as the so-called 4 Horsemen companies that dominated expertise inventory market listings for nearly three a long time. Robertson’s agency, Robertson Stephens, went on to underwrite lots of of expertise corporations, a few of which might in the end develop into family names: Pixar Studios, eBay, E*Commerce, AOL and Dell amongst them.
Frank Quattrone, whom Morgan Stanley despatched within the Nineteen Eighties to the Bay Space in pursuit of tech mandates, recalled Robertson’s stature.
“I admired him an incredible deal and he served as an inspiration for me to dedicate my profession to tech banking,” Quattrone mentioned in an e mail.
Robertson launched Tom Perkins and Eugene Kleiner at a 1972 breakfast assembly in Palo Alto the place the pair determined to launch a enterprise capital agency collectively. That agency, Kleiner Perkins, would go on to develop into the maybe probably the most storied VC in historical past.
In 1995, Robertson Stephens led the IPO of Pixar, the animation studio. Years later, Stephens recalled the calls for of Steve Jobs, the Pixar chief govt on the time, who provided exact views on the design of the prospectus and insisted on vegetarian-only meals throughout roadshow investor conferences.
After promoting Robertson Stephens within the dotcom frenzy of the late Nineteen Nineties, Robertson reinvented himself as each a personal fairness investor and shut adviser to Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff.
Sanford Richard Robertson was born in 1931 in Chicago. His father had acquired a restaurant through the melancholy and Robertson spent his childhood serving to his mother and father function it. “I had an MBA earlier than I received out of highschool,” he would quip.
Robertson had deliberate to attend the lodge administration faculty at Cornell and return to the household enterprise. However his father was in a position to promote the restaurant and as an alternative Robertson went to the College of Michigan the place he earned an undergraduate and masters diploma concurrently within the early-Nineteen Fifties.
After three years within the US Navy, Robertson landed in Smith Barney’s company finance division. His protection space included Nebraska, the place at one level he helped a rising Omaha investor, Warren Buffett, take a big stake in American Specific because the bank card firm sought to recuperate from a scandal.
Robertson was set to take a spot main Smith Barney’s workplace in Los Angeles however was as an alternative despatched to San Francisco to fill an sudden gap. He was accustomed to town after touchdown within the Bay Space for per week’s keep upon his discharge from the navy.
His Smith Barney bosses anticipated him to be calling on the forestry corporations, Chevron, and different old-line Northern California stalwarts. As an alternative, he believed the true motion was 30 miles south of town on the peninsula the place the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Intel had been ushering within the computing period.
“I realised the financial base of town was the valley,” he later mentioned.
In 1968, Robertson broke off from Smith Barney to co-found Robertson, Colman and Siebel, a agency established to do buying and selling and banking strictly for the expertise sector. Thomas Weisel, one other promising San Francisco banker, joined just a few years later. However a battle with Weisel would set off Robertson to type one other agency, Robertson Stephens.
Weisel would rebrand the earlier agency Montgomery Securities. The 4 Horsemen — Robertson Stephens, Montgomery Securities, Hambrecht & Quist and Alex. Brown & Sons — would go on to dominate expertise dealmaking with their tight relationships within the clubby California tech scene.
“Sandy by no means raised his voice, by no means wanted to pound the desk and by no means oversold,” mentioned Larry Sonsini, the eminent Silicon Valley lawyer.
Inventory buying and selling remained a profitable exercise with large spreads, and the companies carried giant fairness analysis staffs at a time when IPOs had been thought of the crowning achievement for rising corporations.
The late Nineteen Nineties introduced threats and alternatives. The Wall Avenue bulge-bracket companies by then had realised the chance in Silicon Valley. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit score Suisse First Boston and others would set up large places of work throughout San Francisco in addition to south in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
On the similar time, a frenzied inventory market allowed Robertson and the others to seize the worth they created, even when it meant their companies could be subsumed into behemoths.
In 1998, Financial institution of America acquired Robertson Stephens for $530mn. However the agency ended up within the arms of Fleet Financial institution and finally shuttered in 2002.
Robertson had left by 1999. With a Robertson Stephens colleague, he then arrange Francisco Companions, a expertise PE agency that at present manages greater than $40bn.
Across the similar time, Robertson met Benioff, an Oracle govt, who had arrange an organization that provided a brand new enterprise mannequin, renting software program to clients somewhat than promoting licences.
Benioff’s start-up, Salesforce.com, had lower than $100mn in income when Robertson joined as an adviser and director. Finally, Salesforce went public and Robertson served on its board till 2023 when its income approached $35bn.
Robertson and his then spouse Jeanne, like Benioff, would develop into necessary benefactors of the hospital on the College of California, San Francisco. Politics additionally rose as an necessary outlet for Robertson who counted fellow San Franciscans, Nancy and Paul Pelosi, as shut pals.
Robertson had been a life-long Republican till he met Invoice Clinton in 1992 at an occasion at Apple the place the Democratic Arkansas governor’s dedication to the North American Free Commerce Settlement impressed him. Robertson hosted a fundraiser for Clinton quickly thereafter, with the festivities spilling into the wee hours at Robertson’s residence within the Russian Hill neighbourhood of San Francisco.
Robertson was a listed producer of almost 30 Broadway reveals together with Hamilton, taking within the particulars of seats offered at what value. He additionally raised racehorses.
Benioff mentioned Robertson was obsessive about understanding find out how to determine profitable ventures whether or not they had been start-ups, theatre productions or thoroughbreds. “He actually beloved winners.”
Robertson is predeceased by spouse, Jeanne. He’s survived by spouse Nancy, three daughters, six grandchildren and two nice grandchildren.
