AUSTIN, Texas A tech multimillionaire, his wife and their two young children were among nine people killed when a private jet crashed into a Palm Beach County neighborhood on Sunday, according to his companies and the families of those aboard. Adam Robinson, 45, founded the Austin software firms Retention.com and RB2B and led a third, MoltSets, at the time of his death.
The chartered Learjet 60 was flying from Austin to the Bahamas when it went down near Greenacres, Florida, shortly before 1 p.m. Also aboard were the family’s nanny, Anita Maria Cetina, and friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr. Captain Jeff Gregory, 55, and co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20, died in the cockpit, and the 20-year-old co-pilot from Boca Raton was identified by her family on Monday. One person on the ground was injured and survived.
“With broken hearts, our families share that Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, their children Emma and Charlie, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and Anita Maria Cetina were among those lost aboard the flight that went down near Greenacres, Florida, on November 1,” the families said in a joint statement shared with WPBF. “Adam and Helen were devoted parents, and Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, were the light of their lives.”
Robinson graduated from Rice University in 2003 with an economics degree and played varsity basketball there, the Austin American-Statesman reported. He self-funded his companies, which identify website visitors and sell business contact data. Business Insider reported that the same 32-person team runs all three firms and that Robinson put their combined revenue at about $35 million a year.
“Adam was much more than our CEO,” the companies said in a Monday statement that called him “a friend, a mentor and a bold, outspoken leader who lived life to the fullest.” His loss, the statement added, “is deeply felt across our team and the tech community, as we collectively mourn.”
The final minutes of the flight are already part of the federal record. The crew had been cruising near 35,000 feet when they reported light icing and moderate turbulence, then asked to climb, according to the New York Times. Minutes later the jet entered a rapid descent. Dashcam footage shows the aircraft in a near-vertical dive before impact, and a widely shared radio recording captured a pilot reporting an extreme rate of descent.
The crash adds another chapter to a grim run of small-aircraft tragedies. The original Devil Wears Prada drummer Daniel Williams died in a San Diego plane crash last year, and days before a fatal 2025 crash, a mother posted a heartfelt TikTok beside her family’s plane.
The National Transportation Safety Board launched a go-team within hours and briefed reporters in West Palm Beach on Monday, and a factual preliminary report typically follows within about 30 days. A final probable-cause finding can run a year or more.
“It’s an unspeakable tragedy,” Brett Hurt, an Austin friend and mentor of Robinson’s, told Business Insider on Monday. Back in Texas, the 32-person team behind his companies is mourning a boss they described as conviction personified, while in Palm Beach County a displaced neighborhood waits on the same federal answers.
