I knew Steve Adams in college. He didn’t know me. He was a senior
and I was a freshman and our relationship thus became frozen in
time. When Steve is 105 years old and I am 102, he will still be
the older, more mature presence, the wiser man.
Over the years I’ve watched Steve’s career out of the corner of
my eye. Following graduation, he went on to Stanford business
school and then into private equity. This was forty years ago,
mind you, and well before private equity was cool. In those days,
PE was a way to buy and build a business rather than a technique
for stripping assets, or a hook from which to hang debt for the
flipper’s dividend. Think of Steve Adams as more Henry Ford than
Henry Kravis.
Steve built himself a heck of a business. RV dealerships and
equipment stores and magazines for the campers. If you’ve ever
hit the open road in anything larger than an SUV, chances are
that you’ve done business with Steve. And if you have, chances
are even better that you returned as a satisfied customer to do
business with him again. He’s innovated constantly and improved
the customer experience over and over. In his hands, recreational
camping became an American obsession and, ultimately, a big
business. Steve is generally regarded as one of the two
superstars of his high-performing B-School class, the other being
Phil Knight, the founder of Nike.
I may have given you the impression that Steve’s some kind of
trailer-park guy. If he sounds like a campground bumpkin, you
should also know that he owns six chateaux in Bordeaux, including
three in St. Emilion and one in Pomerol. Your correspondent can
confirm, after extensive research, that Steve produces some of
the biggest red wines in the world. He’s a man of several parts,
actually, and in his mid-fifties he took up the piano. Not the
way you and I might take up the piano, finger-fumbling our way
through Cole Porter to Billy Joel. With characteristic diligence,
Steve dug in and practiced until he became accomplished, until he
could apprehend the almost-inaudible distinction between very
good and great. He became very good. He preferred great.
In 1999 Steve gave $10 million to the Yale School of Music to
bring its facilities up to international-class. The school’s
faculty, which was already good, improved further. Admissions to
the School became more competitive and some of the students
reached for greatness. Now and then, one of them broke through.
Steve was thrilled.
And then puzzled. Why, he wondered, did so few of these
high-potential student musicians go on to become career
professionals? Why were young musicians with the kind of talent
he could only dream of having — why were they quitting just when
greatness seemed within their grasp? Steve worried the question
some, turning it over like a business problem, and came up with
the answer. Student loans, he surmised. When a Yale graduate
tripped off to McKinsey & Co. or Morgan Stanley, he or she
could pay off the loans with the first bonus check. No problem.
For a young musician, those same loans proved to be a pile of
bricks in the knapsack and, too often, they buckled the knees. In
response to economic pressure, Steve concluded, potentially great
musicians were turning into fungible management consultants.
There was something wrong with that picture. So he went back to
the School of Music with a suggestion. He offered to pay the
tuition bills himself. For every student. Every year. In 2005,
Steve Adams prepaid $100 million worth of student
tuitions.
The results have been immediate and unsurprising. Admission
standards have been elevated, the faculty has attracted new stars
and the School of Music now offers a program fully competitive
with the major conservatories — all of this with an Ivy League
education thrown in as a side benefit. Yale may one day soon be
celebrated more for its instrumental musicians than for its a
cappella singing groups.
Stephen Adams. Of how many people can it be said that they
enhanced the quality of music for audiences around the world?
I should note that Steve’s not a horn-tooter. He made his gift
anonymously. The only reason he’s talking about it now is that,
with his reunion coming up this Spring, he’d like to encourage
his classmates to think creatively. Perhaps he’ll have that
effect on others, as well.
