Access: From touchdown to drawdown
"It’s a hard business. It’s not like ‘Oh, yeah I’ll just go into private equity.’ It’s a hard, hard, business" - Steve Young, fund manager
Hello reader,
Welcome to our 4th edition of Access - the most clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this interview with Jennifer Lawrence.
In case you’re just joining us, a quick reminder on why Melissa & I launched Access:
Along with our team, the two of us spend a significant portion of our week in conversation with people about their area of expertise
The amount of insight we gain through these conversations is staggering
Through Access, we hope to share some of what we’ve learned with a wider audience, building an archive of helpful resources along the way.
“As Hertalis has grown up, I’ve missed having a direct line to you. Our business would be nothing without the people we meet - over the past five years, I have learned so much from you all - this newsletter is our way of reconnecting.”
Each week, we assemble a handful of the best interviews from this past week, along with a more detailed feature about an interesting person from the private markets industry.
This time, it’s the turn of Steve Young - ex-NFL pro, turned fund manager, who turned 61 this week. He has now spent longer working in private markets investing than he did as a pro footballer, and talks candidly about making the transition from the field to the boardroom.
We hope you enjoy this week’s note and would love to hear your feedback and ideas for future newsletters - drop us your thoughts here.
Liz & Melissa
FEATURING:
This week’s best interviews
Dinner with Musk
Lizzo’s magic flute
Shantaram hits the small screen
In-depth with Steve Young; from footballer to fund manager.
IN BRIEF
“I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble . . .”
The Tesla chief talks to the editor of the Financial Times, Roula Khalaf, about moving to Mars, saving free speech via Twitter — and why ageing is one ‘problem’ that should not be solved.
***
“When something good happens to me, I’m always looking over my shoulder for something bad. The years 2008–2012 had a lot of dark spots and trauma.”
The Emmy- and Grammy-winning superstar flautist Lizzo is here to talk about all of it - that flute, that lyric, her man, and more.
***
“To get the light, you have to get through the dark.”
Charlie Hunnam on shooting the long-awaited adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’s 2003 bestseller, Shantaram, which drops this month via Apple TV+.
[Rating cities by the reciprocity of smiles]
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IN-DEPTH
“I try to come in with as soft a presence as possible but inevitably, football is always a little bit of an elephant in the room. Some people are put off by it. Some people are overenergized by it.”
Steve Young turned 61 this week. A Hall of Fame legend and one of the most celebrated quarterbacks in NFL history, Young enjoyed a professional football career spanning 15 years, yet as Chairman and co-founder of HGGC, he now heads up a private equity firm with $7 billion dollars of assets.
Young had started investing in the mid-90’s along with teammates Brent Jones,, Mark Harris and Thomas Vardell. When Young retired from the NFL in 1999, he went on to found PE firm Sorenson Capital in 2001 with Lawson and Gay, and then later set up HGGC.
Young took on the challenge of reinventing himself, launching his second career with great humility. Believing that everyone has the power to seize their entrepreneurial spirit through ‘abundant thinking’ and disrupting patterns of ‘transactional thinking’ he continues to practice philosophies shared with him by his late, great, Hall of Fame coach, Bill Walsh.
About HGGC
HGGC is a leading middle‐market private equity firm with over $6.8 billion in cumulative capital commitments. Since 2007, they have completed 500 portfolio investments and transactions with a total enterprise value of over $68 billion.
On private equity
“It’s a hard business. It’s not like ‘Oh, yeah I’ll just go into private equity.’ It’s a hard, hard, business. There is something about private equity that I think because of the challenge and reward, draws those highly competitive and highly skilled people.”
On maintaining a competitive edge
“Private equity was an interest because it felt in some ways as difficult as football. You can’t replicate what the NFL does and what it asks of you. But some things feel familiar, and the challenge of private equity was familiar. There is a competitive landscape and an intellectual challenge that is similar.”
On retirement from the NFL
“The day before you retire, you’re the best, you’re great at something…. And then all of a sudden, the next day you’re at the bottom of the cliff in broken pieces - what am I great at now? Well, nothing.”
On feeling inauthentic
“I’ve been in private equity now, for longer than I played professional football. I’m only just feeling that I can live in the shoes of a private equity professional authentically and feel like I have expertise.”
On forging a second career
“You have to have a lot of humility because you’re not great at this new thing. You were pretty good at something else. And you have that notoriety. You have a leverage point, but it falls apart very quickly.”
Why you should empower people around you
"[Empowerment] creates a perpetual nature rather than a transactional nature. The answer to the most complex things in my life, the greatest challenges — and I'll start tearing up thinking about those challenges — have found resolution through this kind of thinking."
Sources
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