Ajax DRIVE

Ajax DRIVE

Harness the skills and capabilities that have made you an elite athlete to jumpstart your professional career

July 29 – August 8, Stanford University

Schedule

Day 1

Company Life Cycle: Idea to IPO to LBO

Mon, July 29

What are the stages a company goes through?

Day 2

Entrepreneurship

Tue, July 30

I have an idea, how do I turn it into a company?

Day 3

Venture Capital

Wed, July 31

How do I get the money to grow my company?

Day 4

Growth Equity & Scale

Thu, Aug 1

My company’s got a product, how do I sell it?

Day 5

Investment Banking & IPOs

Mon, Aug 5

My company is successful, how do I get rich?

Day 6

Public Companies & Corporate Leadership

Tue, Aug 6

My company is huge, how do I run it?

Day 7

Private Equity and LBO

Wed, Aug 7

If going public isn’t a great fit, what other options do I have?

Day 8

Now What?

Thu, Aug 8

How do I find and secure the right job?

Recommended Books and Podcasts

Student Groups

Day 1: The Company Life Cycle: Idea to IPO to LBO

What are the stages a company goes through?

Instructor

Duke Rohlen (’90)

CEO, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Ryan O’Hara (’91)

CEO, 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty

Key takeaways

  • The 7 habits of highly effective people
  • The 4Qs
  • From grind to greatness
  • The stages of the company life cycle

Required materials

Discussion questions

  • Why did we ask you to read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People before a program introducing you to business?
  • In which of the 4Qs are you strongest? Which would you like to improve?
  • Do you need to excel at all four of the 4Qs to be successful? Are there any Qs you would add?
  • How would you describe your mentality? What has shaped it? What do you want it to be like? How will YOU shape it?
  • If you could choose a career right now at one stage in the company life cycle, which would you choose? Why?

Recommended resources

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Day 2: Entrepreneurship

I have an idea, how do I turn it into a company?

Instructor

Cason Kynes (’13)

VP, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Duke Rohlen (’90)

CEO, Ajax Health

Key takeaways

  • Business plan components
  • Narrative development
  • Value inflection points

Required materials

Discussion questions

  1. How would you make the case that your group’s highly effective habit is the most crucial for effective entrepreneurship?
  2. Did your entrepreneur demonstrate your group’s highly effective habit? Provide examples.
  3. Which capabilities made the entrepreneur in the podcast you listened to so successful?
  4. All the companies these entrepreneurs started had competitors. How were they able to capture the market?
  5. If you were to start your own company, what would you want to emulate from this entrepreneur’s example? Which mistakes would you be determined to avoid?
  6. What were the key inflection points in the growth of the company in your podcast? How did the company navigate them successfully? Did they fail at any of them?
  7. What narrative did these entrepreneurs build about their companies? Were they able to succinctly communicate its unique value?

Recommended resources

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Day 3: Venture Capital

How do I get the money to grow my company?

Instructor

Doug Koo (MBA ’92)

CFO and Managing Director, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Maurice Werdegar (’86, MBA ’92)

Chairman, WTI

Key takeaways

  • Financial statements
  • Funding rounds (seed, series A, B, C)
  • Equity/stock options

Required materials

Discussion questions

  • How would you make the case that your group’s highly effective habit is the most crucial for effective venture capital investment?
  • What does an income statement tell you about a business? What doesn’t it tell you?
  • What does a balance sheet tell you about a business? What doesn’t it tell you?
  • What are the key financial metrics for a VC presentation? What are VCs looking for?

Recommended resources

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Day 4: Growth Equity and Scale

My company’s got a product, how do I sell it?

Instructor

Shane Kreidel

VP, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Will Griffith (MBA ’00)

Founding Partner, ICONIQ Growth

Key takeaways

  • Profitability
  • Free cash flow
  • Minority or majority stake

Required materials

Discussion questions

  1. How would you make the case that your group’s highly effective habit is the most crucial for effectively working in growth equity?
  2. Thoma Bravo is involved in both private equity and growth equity. Which capabilities or habits have enabled Orlando Bravo’s success at the company?
  3. After reading the Growth Equity Primer, what elements of growth equity did you notice in the way Bravo described the investments he is focused on at Thoma Bravo? Were there aspects that didn’t align with growth equity?
  4. Why is scale so vital at the growth stage of a company?
  5. If you were running a company, would you “blitzscale”? Why or why not?
  6. Which of the 7 habits would blitzscaling particularly require? Would any habits need to be jettisoned in order to blitzscale effectively?

Recommended resources

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Day 5: Investment Banking and IPOs

My company is successful, how do I get rich?

Instructor

Luke Rohlen

Associate, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Lauren Webster

Managing Director, Piper Sandler

Key takeaways

  • Underwriting
  • Mergers & acquisitions (M&A)
  • Initial Public Offering (IPO)
  • Valuation

Required materials

Discussion questions

  1. How would you make the case that your group’s highly effective habit is the most crucial for effectively working in investment banking?
  2. What role do you think investment banking plays in the “economic machine”?
  3. Why would a company want to go public? Why might it choose to stay private instead? What would you want to do?
  4. Why did Google take a “quirky” approach to its IPO?
  5. Who deserves the credit for Amazon’s successful acquisition of Whole Foods? Why?

Recommended resources

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Day 6: Public Companies and Corporate Leadership

My company is huge, how do I run it?

Instructor

Duke Rohlen (’90)

CEO, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Scott Drake

CEO, Cordis

Key takeaways

  • Public vs. private
  • Keeping things simple
  • How to manage through chaos

Required materials

Discussion questions

  • How would you make the case that your group’s highly effective habit is the most crucial for effectively leading a public company?
  • What defines a great company? What makes Southwest great?
  • How did Herb Kelleher demonstrate the concepts from Collins’s Map to Great that your group studied as he built and led Southwest?
  • Did Kelleher violate any of Collins’s concepts? What effect did that have?
  • Can a company be great if its leaders don’t apply the concepts you studied?

Recommended resources

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Day 7: Private Equity and LBO

If going public isn’t a great fit, what other options do I have?

Instructor

David Beylik

VP, Ajax Health

Guest speaker

Gary Swart

General Partner, Polaris Partners

Key takeaways

  • Leveraged buyout (LBO)/management buyout (MBO)
  • Liquidity
  • Value creation
  • Exit strategies and IRR

Required materials

Discussion questions

  1. How would you make the case that your group’s highly effective habit is the most crucial for effectively working in private equity?
  2. Which of the habits does Steve Young demonstrate in his approach to private equity?
  3. How did Young’s athletic career develop capabilities that enabled him to excel in the business? How did he transition so well from sports to business?
  4. What’s the “magic” Steve Young sees in private equity?
  5. Reading about Blackstone’s acquisition of Hilton, what’s the “beauty” of an LBO? How could LBOs become ugly?
  6. How did the acquisition of Hilton become one of private equity’s most successful despite the fact that the timing (right before the 2008 Great Recession) couldn’t have been worse? Does it prove the power of LBOs or was this a unique situation?

Recommended resources

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Day 8: Now What?

How do I find and secure the right job?

Instructor

Duke Rohlen (’90)

CEO, Ajax Health

Guest speakers

Representatives from:

Key takeaways

  • PLEBS—Pace, Leadership, Energy, Brand, Sales

Required materials

  • Write the article you would hope to read about yourself in your university’s alumni magazine in 25 years (500 words).

Discussion questions

  • What inspired the approach you took to the article you wrote about your future self?
  • What can you do NOW to ensure that article becomes a reality?
  • How will you leverage the 7 Habits to achieve these goals?
  • How do you think about time?
  • What distinguishes leaders from followers?
  • How do you build AND maintain energy?
  • How would you define your brand?
  • “Everyone is always selling.” Do you agree?

Recommended resources

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