Steve Young has always been something of an over-performer.
On the football field, he was a three-time Super Bowl champion with the San Francisco 49ers, who revolutionised the quarterback position with his duel-threat ability on the pass and run.
To this day, he holds the record for the most touchdown passes in a single Super Bowl game (XXIX) with six.
Young was also named the NFL‘s Most Valuable Player in two of his 15 years in the league, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame back in 2005.
But two decades on from that Hall of Fame honor, the legendary quarterback lives a very different life.
Following his NFL retirement, Young became intent on making a name for himself in investing, and resisted leveraging his on-field fame for many years.
Armed with a law degree he earned during his playing career, and having had a front row seat to the tech revolution in Silicon Valley thanks to his time with San Francisco, he has quietly built an investment firm that has done more than $79billion in deals.
In 2007, Young co-founded the private equity firm Huntsman Gay Global Capital (HGGC) with billionaire industrialist Jon M. Huntsman and former Bain Capital executive Robert C. Gay.
Nearly two decades on, the firm has successfully completed over 730 platform investments, add-on transactions, and exits, totaling nearly $80bn in enterprise value.
Having retired from the NFL aged 39, Young knew that he had ‘half of his life’ to build a different type of empire, and he initially tried to keep it separate from his on-field achievements.
His longtime business partner, Rich Lawson, would hang Young’s former college and pro jerseys in the headquarters of HGGC.
The former quarterback, though, would take them down, and bring them home.
GettyHe’s a well-known NFL face after years on ESPN[/caption]
“I thought, the more famous you are as a player, the more accomplished you are, the more I thought it would be difficult to have people take you seriously,” Young told Bloomberg in an interview back in 2022.
“Maybe I overplayed it. I can admit that at this point, but if you’re going to start from the beginning and be a founder and kind of claw out from the beginning, you can’t bring that with you.”
Young’s outlook has changed in more recent years, and after completing billions worth of deals, he is no longer running from his past life.
The jerseys now have a place on the wall, and Young’s side of the Palo Alto, California, office he shares with Lawson is ‘crammed with a mash-up of Wall Street deal toys, football helmets and NFL memorabilia.’
“My previous life was amazing, throwing Jerry Rice a touchdown in front of 80,000 people, and winning games, there’s nothing like it,” the former quarterback said.
“It’s not 80,000 people watching it, but (this) feels familiar, and that’s why I think there’s magic in private equity.”
A profile from Bloomberg, published in 2022, described Young as a man who remains in constant motion, who is now intent on marrying his private equity ambitions with his goal of advising current and former NFL players about how to be successful in business.
Young is among the more ambitious retired pros who have pursued business careers after stepping away from the game.
He has emulated his childhood hero, Roger Staubach, who made his post-football fortune in real estate.
But he has also perhaps inspired the likes of Peyton Manning and Eli Manning, who have begun building empires of their own.
At 63, Young has now been in the world of investment for longer than he played in the NFL.
And while they are two very different careers, he sees them as equally challenging and energizing.
“Playing in the NFL and trying to be good or great, it takes everything, you just pour yourself into it, and you can’t replicate it,” he said.
“You can try and you can waste your time and you can actually create more problems for yourself in trying to replicate what you had in the NFL.
“In that way, personally, just the job and the business and what success is and how rare it is, it feels similar.”
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