Robert Reffkin is the president and co-founder of Compass, a residential brokerage in New York City that launched in 2013 as Urban Compass, changing its name at the beginning of 2015.

He co-founded the firm with Ori Allon, a computer-science Ph.D. from Australia who had been working as the engineering director of Twitter's New York office. Not surprisingly, then, much of Compass' early buzz in the marketplace and its appeal to brokers hinged on in-house technology that supposedly not only cut down on administrative work but also facilitated faster reaction to listing changes and debuts.

The venture-capital-backed firm piled on big names and big assignments since its founding. Leonard Steinberg, long one of Douglas Elliman's top-performing Manhattan brokers, joined Compass in 2014 as president. Other big names include Kyle Blackmon, formerly of Brown Harris Stevens; Gene Martinez from the Corcoran Group (who dies in January 2021); and Jay Glazer, formerly of Warburg Realty, (who later left to join Corcoran)

Compass investors have also included notable names such as landlord and developer Bill Rudin and SalesForce.com founder Marc Benioff as well as institutions such as Goldman Sachs. Indeed, the brokerage's executive ranks claim quite a few banking and consultancy alums. The startup is also heavily backed by Japan's SoftBank.

Its new-development exclusives include the Arthur in Chelsea; Seven Harrison in Tribeca; Five Sixty West 24th, also in Chelsea; and 152 Elizabeth Street in Nolita.

In TRD's 2021 brokerage ranking, Compass ranked No. 1 in headcount for the first time. The firm went public with a IPO on April 1 2021, raising $450 million, achieving a valuation of $7.7 billion, down from its initial target of $10 billion.

Reffkin himself springs from that world. He was chief of staff to the president and COO of Goldman Sachs immediately prior to co-founding Compass. Before that, he worked at Lazard and McKinsey & Co.

He graduated from Columbia, and earned an MBA from there as well, and once worked as a White House Fellow in the Treasury Department. Reffkin has run nearly 50 marathons to boot, one in each state.