Robert Smith already had a few dollars.

Vista Equity’s Marketo sale has resulted in the biggest realized profit in the private equity firm’s history. On Thursday September 20th 2018, Vista Equity Partners announced it would be selling Marketo to Adobe for $4.75 billion, vindicating a strategy that Smith and his Vista billionaire co-founder, Brian Sheth, initiated as the software private equity game they helped create was going mainstream.

This deal is supposed to make $3 Billion in two years. 

In 2017, Marketo’s revenue grew to about $321 million from $209 million in 2015 and by the start of 2018 the company was generating positive EBITDA; it was posting -$50 million of EBITDA in the 12 months before the Vista acquisition. Marketo remains a strong marketing automation platform with a large installed subscription base and the wind at its back in a growing market.