From left: VTS COO Patrick Kehoe, CTO Niall Smart and VTS CEO Nick Romito (VTS)
Two members of VTS’ C-suite bid the company farewell this week.
Niall Smart, chief technology officer at the New York–based proptech firm, and Patrick Kehoe, chief operating officer, announced their upcoming departures at an all-hands meeting Thursday, citing personal reasons, according to Smart and VTS chief executive Nick Romito.
Smart’s final day will be in early September, while Kehoe will leave at the end of that month, Romito said.
“These two people are leaving on the best of terms. This is a personal decision for them to spend time with their families during a very trying time,” he said, referring to the pandemic, which began 18 months ago. “We announced them together because it felt like a close enough time period that the team could celebrate them together.”
VTS is a cloud-based leasing and portfolio management system that was last valued at over $1 billion. Last year the company launched “VTS Market,” a digital platform where office leases can be executed remotely and, in March, it acquired Rise Buildings, a mobile app for commercial tenants, for $100 million.
The exiting executives both hail from Ireland and came to VTS through Hightower, a leasing and management platform that merged with VTS in late 2016. Romito said their departures were coincidental and had nothing to do with performance or any other “underlying reason” related to the company.
“The No. 1 and only reason for that is that it’s been two years since I got to see family,” he said. “My parents are 12 years older and I am 12 years older and I’d like to spend more time with them.”
He called his time at VTS “an incredible journey” and said he would continue to work as an adviser to the company.
“I’m not going to disappear into thin air,” he said. “I will have an ongoing relationship with the company, just not as CTO.”
Kehoe, who was traveling, did respond to requests for comment, but Romito said he too would be an adviser to the firm.
VTS will hire a new CTO but likely will not fill Kehoe’s position, according to Romito.
“Just the way the organization is working… Patrick did such a good job of building up leaders below him,” said Romito.
