Private Equity Lessons from the Carlyle, Beats and Apple Deal

The Deal

In 2006, five years after the first iPod was introduced, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre collaborated on a headphone company known as Beats. In 2014, Apple purchased Beats for over $3B. Along the way, Caryle made some money as well.

 

The Deal from each Perspective

There are three parties to this transaction, all with unique lessons from their own perspective:

  • Beats Perspective - Leveraging unique marketing tactics like Beats did to create a premium brand, is a great value creation strategy when buying companies
  • Apple Perspective - Leveraging an acquisition's unique talent and infrastructure to develop products and services as Apple did, is common amongst private companies executing a buy-and-build strategy
  • Carlyle Perspective - When buying companies, try to leverage your network to help with recruiting and future growth, as Carlyle did when they helped Beats prepare for their sale to Apple