Adam Robinson’s family is mourning the Texas tech executive, his wife and their two young children after a chartered Learjet disintegrated on impact in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.
Robinson, 44, his wife Helen Sharp, 40, and their kids Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, died instantly when the private jet plummeted nearly 30,000 feet in roughly a minute and slammed into the ground outside a trailer park. The $2 million flight, bound for the Bahamas from Texas, carried nine people total, and no one survived.
The millionaire entrepreneur had posted an eerily prescient message on X in April. “You don’t need to crash a plane to learn to fly … and you don’t need VC to build a business,” he wrote, offering startup wisdom that now carries a haunting weight.
Robinson, who was based in Austin, founded and ran software companies Retention.com and RB2B. The former banker had previously worked at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital, according to his LinkedIn profile. His social feeds were filled with similar advice about entrepreneurship and company-building.
Hours before the fatal flight, he had posted on LinkedIn about “fixing churn,” “leaving money on the table” and a friendly debate about the structure of his companies.
Also killed were Robinson’s friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, the family’s nanny Anita Maria Apellido Cetina, pilot Jeff Gregory and 20-year-old co-pilot Nathalia Filgueiras, who had earned her pilot’s license while still in high school. Filgueiras can be heard screaming and pleading for help in audio that captured her final panicked moments as the aircraft rapidly descended.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation. The jet began falling after flying through temperatures as cold as -50 degrees Fahrenheit while attempting to pass over a patch of bad weather. The plane accumulated ice and encountered heavy turbulence before breaking apart, scattering debris across a half-mile radius, authorities said on Monday.
Aviation experts have speculated that thunderstorms may have contributed to the disaster. AccuWeather meteorologists noted that a quarter of an inch of rain fell per hour in the surrounding area at the time.
Dramatic footage shared online shows a gaping crater in the street, fires raging and debris strewn across the road as smoke billowed into the air. The aircraft completely disintegrated on impact.
Sharp was a ceramics artist who frequently shared videos of her works on Instagram, alongside photos of the couple’s two young children.
“Adam and Helen were devoted parents, and Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, were the light of their lives,” Robinson’s family shared in a social media tribute. Their friends Charmi and Rachael “were full of joy and adventure. They loved their people fiercely, fully and without hesitation.”
Anita Maria “cared for Emma and Charlie with tenderness and devotion, and she was truly part of the family,” the statement continued.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the crash, which made international headlines after the plane exploded into a fireball on the Florida street.