ROBERT KRAFT

Robert Kenneth Kraft was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1941. His father ran a small dress shop.

Kraft worked his way through school, married his college sweetheart Myra Hiatt in 1963, and started his career at the Rand-Whitney Group, a packaging company owned by his father-in-law. He eventually took over and built it into a major containerboard and packaging business.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he expanded into other businesses — paper mills, physical plant assets, and real estate. He bought the land under the old Foxboro Stadium in 1988 for $25 million, which gave him leverage to eventually buy the team.

He bought the stadium itself in 1988 out of bankruptcy for another $25 million. Then in 1994, he bought the New England Patriots for $172 million from James Orthwein.

The team was terrible and had nearly been relocated to St. Louis.

Within a decade, the Patriots would become the most dominant franchise in NFL history.

The Kraft Group is the umbrella. Under it sits Rand-Whitney Group (packaging and containerboard), International Forest Products (paper trading and distribution), New England Patriots, New England Revolution (MLS), Gillette Stadium, Patriot Place (retail and entertainment complex), and various real estate holdings.

He also has investments in Israbox (an Israeli-Russian media venture), a stake in the Boston Uprising (esports), and a number of private equity holdings. The Kraft Group revenues exceed $10 billion annually across all entities.

Kraft is a patient, strategic investor. He doesn't make impulse buys.

The Patriots acquisition took six years of maneuvering — buying the land, then the stadium lease, then the team — each move designed to put him in a stronger negotiating position for the next one. In business, he built the Kraft Group through steady acquisitions of industrial assets, mostly in paper and packaging.

Not sexy, but extremely cash-generative. His investment philosophy is: find unglamorous, essential businesses that generate reliable cash flow, and use that cash to make bigger and better deals.

Buying the New England Patriots for $172 million in 1994 and hiring Bill Belichick in 2000. The franchise has won six Super Bowls (2001, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016, 2018) and is now worth over $7 billion.

That's a 40x return. But the more impressive number is this: the Patriots generated an estimated $600+ million in revenue in peak years and became the most-watched team in American sports for nearly two decades.

Kraft also built Gillette Stadium entirely with private money — no public financing — and then built Patriot Place around it.

Not making a bigger push to keep Tom Brady in 2020. Brady left for Tampa Bay and immediately won a seventh Super Bowl.

The Patriots entered their worst stretch in decades. Kraft has said publicly he wished things had gone differently, but deferred to Belichick on the football decision.

The lesson: even the best delegators sometimes need to override their experts on the decisions that matter most. The Patriots went from a dynasty to rebuilding overnight.

Kraft believes in three things: hiring great people and letting them work, building from a position of financial strength, and never risking the core business for a speculative play. He also believes deeply in the power of relationships — his Rolodex is legendary, and many of his biggest deals came through personal connections rather than banker introductions.

His approach to the NFL is the same as his approach to business: build infrastructure, hire the best operator you can find, and be patient.

Kraft married Myra Hiatt in 1963. They were married for 48 years until her death from cancer in 2011.

They had four sons: Jonathan (who runs Patriots day-to-day operations), Daniel, Joshua, and David. Myra was a prominent philanthropist in her own right, and her death deeply affected Kraft.

In 2022, he married Dana Blumberg, a doctor. Kraft has been open about how difficult Myra's death was and credits her with being the reason he bought the Patriots — she convinced him the team mattered to the community.

Columbia University (B.A., 1963). Harvard Business School (MBA, 1965).

He has said Harvard taught him discipline but the packaging business taught him everything about actually running a company.

As an Amazon Associate, Netfigo earns from qualifying purchases. Book links above may be affiliate links.