Sanford “Sandy” Robertson, the pioneering Silicon Valley financier whose IPOs helped turn a sleepy peninsula in northern California into a global economic powerhouse, has died at the age of 93.

Robertson was among the first bankers to recognize the potential of technological innovations coming out of the suburbs south of San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, New York’s major investment banks showed little interest in the high-risk, little-known inventions that would later shape every aspect of modern life.

He and a handful of like-minded backers founded small investment banks that specialized in the emerging industry. Together they became known as the “Four Horsemen,” who dominated tech stock market listings for nearly three decades. Robertson’s firm, Robertson Stephens, underwrote hundreds of technology companies, some of which eventually became household names: Pixar Studios, eBay, E*Trade, AOL and Dell were among them.

Frank Quattrone, whom Morgan Stanley sent to the Bay Area in the 1980s to take on technology mandates, remembered Robertson’s reputation.

“I admired him greatly and he was my inspiration to dedicate my career to tech banking,” Quattrone said in an email.

Robertson introduced Tom Perkins and Eugene Kleiner to each other at a breakfast meeting in Palo Alto in 1972, where the two decided to form a venture capital firm together. That firm, Kleiner Perkins, would become perhaps the most famous venture capitalist in history.

In 1995, Robertson Stephens led the IPO of the animation studio Pixar. Years later, Stephens recalled the demands of then Pixar boss Steve Jobs, who had precise ideas about the design of the prospectus and insisted at roadshow events with investors that only vegetarian meals be offered.

After selling Robertson Stephens during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, Robertson reinvented himself as a private equity investor and close advisor to Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff.

Sanford Richard Robertson was born in Chicago in 1931. His father had purchased a restaurant during the Depression, and Robertson spent his childhood helping his parents run the business. “I had an MBA before I even got into high school,” he joked.

Robertson had planned to attend hotel school at Cornell and return to the family business, but his father was able to sell the restaurant and instead Robertson went to the University of Michigan, where he earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in the early 1950s.

After three years in the U.S. Navy, Robertson landed in Smith Barney’s corporate finance division, where his responsibilities included Nebraska, where he once helped an up-and-coming Omaha investor, Warren Buffett, acquire a large stake in American Express as the credit card company tried to recover from a scandal.

Robertson was supposed to take over Smith Barney’s Los Angeles office, but was sent to San Francisco instead to fill an unexpected void. He knew the city, having landed in the Bay Area for a week after his discharge from the Navy.

His bosses at Smith Barney expected him to visit the forestry companies, Chevron and other long-established Northern California corporations. Instead, he believed the real action was taking place 30 miles south of the city on the peninsula, where companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel were ushering in the computer age.

“I realized that the valley is the economic base of the city,” he later said.

In 1968, Robertson left Smith Barney to co-found Robertson, Colman and Siebel, a firm devoted exclusively to trading and banking for the technology sector. Thomas Weisel, another promising banker from San Francisco, joined a few years later. However, a conflict with Weisel led Robertson to found another firm: Robertson Stephens.

Weisel renamed the former firm Montgomery Securities. The “Four Horsemen” – Robertson Stephens, Montgomery Securities, Hambrecht & Quist and Alex. Brown & Sons – dominated technology trading thanks to their close relationships in the California tech scene.

“Sandy never raised his voice, never had to bang the table, and never asked for too much,” said Larry Sonsini, the renowned Silicon Valley lawyer.

Stock trading remained a lucrative business with wide spreads and firms had large teams of equity analysts – at a time when IPOs were seen as the crowning achievement of growing companies.

The late 1990s brought danger and opportunity. The big Wall Street firms had already recognized the opportunity in Silicon Valley. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse First Boston and others opened huge offices throughout San Francisco and to the south in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

At the same time, a surging stock market allowed Robertson and the others to cash in on the value they had created, even if it meant their companies becoming part of giant corporations.

In 1998, Bank of America acquired Robertson Stephens for $530 million. But the company ended up in the hands of Fleet Bank and had to close in 2002.

Robertson left the company in 1999. Together with a colleague from Robertson Stephens, he founded Francisco Partners, a private equity firm in the technology sector that now manages $65 billion.

Around the same time, Robertson met Benioff, an Oracle executive who had founded a company that offered a new business model: renting software to customers instead of selling licenses.

Benioff’s startup Salesforce.com had less than $100 million in revenue when Robertson joined as an advisor and director. Eventually, Salesforce went public and Robertson sat on the board until 2023, when revenue reached $35 billion.

Robertson and his then wife Jeanne, like Benioff, became important benefactors of the hospital at the University of California, San Francisco. Politics also became an important field of activity for Robertson, and his fellow San Francisco residents Nancy and Paul Pelosi were also close friends.

Robertson was a lifelong Republican until he met Bill Clinton at an event at Apple in 1992. There he was impressed by the Democratic governor of Arkansas’s commitment to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Shortly thereafter, Robertson hosted a fundraiser for Clinton that lasted until the early hours of the morning at Robertson’s home in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.

Robertson has produced nearly 30 Broadway shows, including Hamiltonnoting down the details of the seats sold and at what price. He also bred racehorses.

Benioff said Robertson was obsessed with understanding how to recognize successful ventures, whether they were start-ups, theater productions or thoroughbreds. “He really loved winners.”

Robertson’s wife Jeanne has already passed away. He leaves behind his wife Nancy, three daughters, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.