Steve Young Shares Lessons From the Private Equity Playbook With a First-Time Founder

The athlete-turned-investor helps Tessa Barton prepare to scale her bootstrapped photo-editing startup, Tezza.

- KEVIN J. RYAN

Not many entrepreneurs have both professional football and private equity on their résumés. But Steve Young has always been something of an overperformer. During his 15-year career in the NFL, the Hall of Fame quarterback earned himself three Super Bowl victories, two Most Valuable Player awards, and, somehow, a law degree. Playing for the San Francisco 49ers during the 1990s gave Young a front-row seat to the Silicon Valley tech boom, so when he retired from the NFL in 2000, launching a second act as an investor seemed like a smart play.

In 2007, Young co-founded the private equity firm HGGC with veteran investors Greg Benson, Bob Gay, and Rich Lawson. The Palo Alto, California-based firm has completed more than 600 investments in companies with a combined enterprise value of more than $70 billion. While PE may be nothing like the NFL, investing in fast-growing companies does remind Young of his playing days.

"It's very competitive, the stakes are high, and being good at it is really hard," Young says. Having worked in private equity for longer than he played pro football, Young now draws on his experience as an investor to help mentor other business owners.

Tessa Barton is one such entrepreneur. A former photographer, Barton launched the photo-editing app Tezza in 2018. The Los Angeles-based company offers both amateur and professional photographers editing tools for photos and videos, and generated over $26 million in revenue in 2023. Barton runs the business with her husband and co-CEO, a former software engineer, and the pair have yet to raise outside capital.

"We've been keeping things really tight and small because that's what we know how to do," Barton says. "Now we feel we need to get it to the next level."

We brought Barton and Young together at HGGC's headquarters to talk about leadership, building a company culture, and when to look for outside investors.