The Richard and Susan Smith Foundation's Portfolio

This week, we’ll take a look at the Richard and Susan Smith Foundation’s portfolio. The foundation is one of hundreds of new foundations we added to OWL last week. OWL users can expect to see the number of allocators in our system expand substantially in the coming weeks and months as we pipe in new data sources.

The Richard and Susan Smith Foundation was founded in 1970 by the Smith Family, who owned what ultimately became 3 NYSE-listed public companies - Harcourt General, General Cinema Corp, and Neiman Marcus. As a part of his diversification strategy, Richard also acquired the American Beverage Corp. of Ohio in 1967, which he grew into the largest independent bottler of Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and 7-Up in the United States. Richard Smith was well-known in the Boston community, serving in leadership roles at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Harvard University, and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. Richard’s obituary from 2020 provides fascinating details about his work, both in business and in philanthropy. When he retired from his business career, he is quoted as saying “we all just had so much fun.”

The foundation received the majority of its assets when Harcourt General and Neiman Marcus were sold. According to the family, the foundation gave away $750 million during Richard’s lifetime, including $100 million to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Smiths’ three children are continuing the work of the foundation today, giving ~$18 million in grants annually. Richard’s sister, Nancy Lurie Marks, also has a foundation that we track in OWL.

As a side note, Richard and Susan’s son (Robert Smith) and son-in-law (Brian Knez) are the co-founders of Castanea Partners, a consumer-focused private equity firm with LPs including MIT and the Rockefeller Foundation. Castanea has lost a number of senior employees in recent years, including several former partners who founded Stride Consumer Partners in 2019. OWL users can see a full list of former employees on Castanea’s profile. Robert Smith and Brian Knez also previously worked in the family business, serving as co-CEOs of Neiman Marcus prior to its acquisition by TPG and Warburg Pincus.

The Smith Foundation operates with a relatively small staff, and its most recent filing disclosed $589K paid to Cambridge Associates as its investment advisor. In Friday’s newsletter, we shared a list of 25 managers from the foundation’s portfolio, including Qiming, Dragoneer, and RA Capital. For more information on the 2,000+ allocator portfolios that we track, reach out!

One manager on the foundation’s roster is Addition, the VC firm founded in 2019 by Lee Fixel, former partner and head of private equity at Tiger Global. Addition invests in founder-led technology-enabled companies and has grown to $6.5 billion in assets over the last 5 years. Disclosed LPs include Mass General Brigham and the Och Family Foundation.

Over the past 5 years, the firm has launched 4 funds, each of which has assets over $1.5 billion today:

Addition discloses very little information on its website but according to media reports, the firm has invested in companies including Stripe, dLocal, Delhivery, Chainalysis, and Zap Energy.

A graduate of Washington University, Fixel currently serves on the Board of Directors of WashU IMC. He has also made headlines in the Hamptons, attempting to get beach access for his $57 million home. Lee and his wife, Lauren, have a family foundation and are also significant contributors to the Michael J. Fox Foundation focused on Parkinson’s research. In 2019, the Fixels’ family foundation donated $20 million to the University of Florida to establish a center for neurological diseases.

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About Old Well Labs

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

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