Does anyone have some background on why Stephen Davis left Vista Equity Partners after cofounding it?
Thought it was interesting that someone would leave Vista in 2009 while being a founding partner and as a firm they'd already been building a great reputation. Anyone know what happened? Schism between him and former BSchool classmate Robert Smith? Pushed out? There isn't a single article I can find mentioning the fact that he left which seems strange given how regularly I read about partners moving around in PE Hub and the like.
His new firm Banneker Partners caught my eye since we recently lost a deal to them and I saw they had some other high profile investments alongside firms like TCV and Permira. Clearly he's still doing well but he'd probably be a multi-billionaire like Smith if he'd stayed seeing as how they were the senior cofounders.
Give the guy a break - maybe he just had his own view of fashion versus the Vista guy:
Not at all disparaging the guy, he's got some great investments under his belt and the platform seems notably different from Vista given that it's backed purely by GP and family office capital. But I've seen in some other posts on these boards and heard second hand about deep rooted culture issues at Vista. It'd be interesting to learn a bit about drama behind the scenes between founders at one of the top performing PE funds in the world. Imagine if the KK from KKR decided to boot R out barely 10 years after inception.
Personally I'm big fan of the royal blue suits Robert rocks.
Uh, but KKR did boot out the K for Kohlberg lol. Chronicled in King of Capital.
How is Banneker Partners as a firm? Seems like it plays in the lower middle market, far below what Vista Equity does?
No clue, they play a smaller market but they're running just GP and some family office capital. When you search their ADV sections on the IAPD there's no record so it's probably sub $100M but that's not to say the GPs and FOs might have more to co-invest independent of the fund itself. Even if they're just running a few hundred mil between them, the team is so small the carry split would be pretty fat for the partners on successful deals, and like I mentioned they've got some great investors going in with them on some of them.
Maybe he just wanted to mix things up or run a smaller operation? After a certain point money isn't really too important since it doesn't materially affect your lifestyle.
That makes total sense and I can understand that reasoning. But why is there literally NOTHING about this guy from his time at Vista? If he was one of the founders you'd think there would be at least something out there, but it's as if his very involvement with Vista has been wiped from articles. Not a single interview either. Even the article I linked only mentions his name once. Maybe I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist but it almost seems like someone went out of their way to remove as much history of his involvement with Vista as possible.
He is probably trying to maintain a low profile.
Why are you so obsessed with the guy?
I think people forgot that 5-10 years ago ppl barely knew who Vista was.
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Steve Davis is one of the smartest guys in software buyouts. I have known him and people around hm for over 20 years. You see differences of opinion or future strategy in PE all the time and often see big egos that want to control everything, which clearly describes Robert Smith. Look at the Vista web site versus the Hellman and Friedman web site. On H&F, its hard to even see who is in charge. On Vista, you see Robert Smith front and center before any other investing partner. That tells you what you want to know about how people view their teammates. Steve is a team oriented player who is a tremendous talent at choosing the right mid-size company and making it much more valuable. He has never had a single negative remark that I have heard about his integrity, skill or character. That's all anyone cares about.
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