David Breach

David A. Breach is President of Vista Equity Partners, one of the world's largest investment firms focused exclusively on enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. Born in 1966, he grew up outside Toronto, Canada, before relocating to Michigan as a teenager. He earned a B.B.A. in marketing from Eastern Michigan University while working as a salesperson, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1994, graduating *magna cum laude* and as a member of the Order of the Coif.

Breach began his career as a lawyer, spending roughly five years at Honigman Miller in Detroit before joining Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, where he served as a corporate group partner for 14 years. At Kirkland he focused on representing private equity funds across all aspects of their business, sat on the firm's 15-person global executive management committee, and was a founding partner of its San Francisco office, helping grow Kirkland's Northern California practice to more than 250 employees. He was recognized as Law360's "MVP of the Year" for private equity in 2013 and earned a Chambers "Tier 1" rating for private equity M&A in 2011.

He joined Vista Equity Partners in 2014, initially serving as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer. In August 2021 he was appointed President while retaining operational oversight. At Vista, Breach sits on the firm's Executive Committee and Private Equity Management Committee, and serves on the investment committees for Vista's Flagship, Foundation, Endeavor, and Perennial funds, as well as the Investment Committee and Board of VistaOne (the firm's private-wealth/insurance platform), where he is Co-CEO. His role spans investment strategy, firm governance, talent, and strategic initiatives.

Outside of Vista, Breach is an active philanthropist. He and his wife Emily established a $1 million need-based scholarship at the University of Michigan Law School in 2017, founded the Breach Family Foundation in 2019, and committed $5 million to permanently endow the David A. Breach Deanship at the law school. He has also been associated with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.

• Invests through Vista's strategy of acquiring and scaling enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled companies — control buyouts and growth investments rather than early-stage/angel checks.
• Operates across Vista's fund families (Flagship for larger-cap software, Foundation for middle-market, Endeavor for emerging/smaller software companies, and Perennial for long-hold permanent capital), so check sizes range broadly from the hundreds of millions into the billions depending on the fund and deal.
• Vista's approach emphasizes operational improvement post-acquisition through standardized best practices (the "Vista Standard Operating Procedures"), making operational rigor and recurring-revenue software models central to the firm's "yes."
• As President and former CLO/COO, Breach's lens is heavily weighted toward governance, legal/operational structuring, and firm-wide strategy rather than sourcing individual seed deals.