David Hoffmann

David Hoffmann was born in 1952 in the rural farming community of Washington, Missouri, outside St. Louis, the son of a nurse and a WWII veteran. He grew up without running hot water until his sophomore year of high school and rose early with his father to collect milk from local farms — an upbringing he often cites as the root of his work ethic. A star high-school quarterback, he earned a football scholarship to Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State) before transferring to the University of Central Missouri, where he completed a B.S. (and later received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, serving as the 2022 commencement speaker).

In 1989 Hoffmann founded DHR International (now DHR Global), reportedly putting two mortgages on his house to start it; 30 colleagues followed him from his prior employer. He built DHR into one of the largest privately held executive search firms in the world. Shortly thereafter he established Osprey Capital, LLC, a private family office, originally to invest excess cash generated by DHR.

Over three decades, Osprey Capital and the broader Hoffmann Family of Companies have grown into one of the largest single-family offices in the world — by the firm's own account more than 200 brands and properties across roughly 30 countries, employing 26,000+ people. The enterprise is run as a multi-generational family business: son Geoff Hoffmann leads the private-equity arm (and serves as co-CEO), and son Greg Hoffmann leads the real-estate arm. David has been featured on the Forbes Billionaires List for multiple consecutive years.

Hoffmann is also a noted philanthropist and civic figure, particularly in Naples, Florida, where the family has funded cultural, education, healthcare, and community projects. He received the 2023 Horatio Alger Award, given to Americans who overcome adversity to achieve success. He and his wife Jerri, high-school sweethearts, have been married more than 50 years and have three children and more than a dozen grandchildren.

• Operates as a family office / holding company, not an angel or seed fund — Osprey Capital deploys family capital into control acquisitions of established operating businesses and holds them long-term.
• Explicitly favors partnering with strong management teams and hands-on leaders, sharing "support, insights, opportunities, and best practices" across the portfolio rather than running a hands-off financial model.
• Sector-agnostic and highly diversified: dairy/food, ice cream, agriculture, luxury luggage, events/experiential marketing, commercial real estate, media/newspapers, transportation/trailers, golf and hospitality, and professional sports.
• Comfortable with complex and distressed situations — Osprey acquired Oberweis Dairy out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy via a competitive auction, then announced expansion plans rather than asset-stripping.
• Roots trace back to the founding philosophy of reinvesting operating cash flow (originally DHR's) into durable, cash-generative businesses.