The billionaire athlete – Injury prevention for endurance – AI-automated sports production – Saying no to Shark Tank – Sports-centric Web3 – Wellness social clubs - New addiction treatments
Week 47
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Confessions
LeBron James is a billionaire.
I’ve assumed this to be the case for some time, but various news outlets have made it official with a host of articles exposing the scale and complexity of The Akron Hammer’s business empire. Back in 2014 he said:
“It’s my biggest milestone. Obviously. I want to maximize my business. And if I happen to get it, if I happen to be a billion-dollar athlete, ho. Hip hip hooray!”
The language here is significant; “I want to maximize my business.” It’s become a bonafide cliche to refer to athletes as business people, but the professionalisation of extracurricular financial interests is new and interesting.
King James has earned a fortune from his basketball career and hundreds of millions for endorsements. He’s also been canny with these relationships, compelling sponsors like Blaze Pizza, Beats By Dre, and Beachbody to grant him equity in their projects. He’s a partner with Fenway Sports Group, giving him meaningful exposure to the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Liverpool FC. But his biggest win is undoubtedly Spring Hill Company, an investment vehicle he set up with longtime friend and business partner Maverick Carter.
LeBron and other superstar athlete investors aren’t just cutting angel cheques and/or trading basis points for Instagram posts – they’re professional investors with robust fund management vehicles. Part of this trend is idiosyncratic – athletes have real-world domain knowledge in technical fields. They have access to deal flow. They can optimise their investments through brand ambassadorships and attracting follow-on investment. But there is also something structural going on.
There has in recent years been an intensification of family office interest in startups. This is part cold financial reality, and part warm, fuzzy reputational enhancement. Startups are cool. Founders are inspiring. Athletes share an existential communality with entrepreneurial risk takers. Both are the Promethean heroes of our culture, as I pointed out in memo on The Founder’s Journey.
The route into startup investing has changed too. Traditionally, family offices bought into startups via third party venture funds, which mediated access to this exciting, risky, obscure world. In recent years family offices have been questioning the value of “Indirect Investing”, cutting out who they see as “the middleman” and mainlining into startup cap tables. “Direct Investing” is seen as cheaper/better since it negates VC fees, but all too often this is a false economy leading to inferior net returns for family offices who simply aren’t set up to dodge the slings and arrows of startup investing.
Whatever the underlying dynamic, more and more athletes and their investment vehicles are buying into startups. That is going to have a massive impact on public perception. Athletes are called “role models” for a reason – many people literally model their behaviour on them. They are more than trendsetters – they’re perception shapers. When athletes start talking about racial equality, people listen. When athletes start taking psychedelics, people take notice. And when athletes start investing in startups, people start thinking differently about their investments.
I’ve been writing about athlete empowerment for some time, charting the slow but inevitable reformation of power structures within sports. With Web3, the technological infrastructure to scale that nascent movement is being built out – the decentralised, player-fan-owned future could materialise faster than the industry expects.
LeBron James is a billionaire. That’s a measure of his value as a person, but also as a symbol. He’s an avatar for sporting perfection and the commercialisation of cultural influence. And he’s a sign of things to come.
Deal Flow
This week we have 45 deals across Sports, Fitness, Wellness, Mental Health, Web3, Health, Apparel, Media, Esports & Metaverse, Nutrition, Fertility & Maternity, Angels, Funds, & Accelerators, Sports Betting, and Experiential.
Sports
🥊 Alex Rodriguez invests in mixed martial arts company PFL at $500 million valuation – Alex Rodriguez is betting on the growth of mixed martial arts. The former MLB star is now a partial owner of the Professional Fighters League after he contributed to a $30 million funding round. Rodriguez joined media investment firm Waverley Capital in the raise and will have a seat on PFL’s board of directors.
👩🎓 The NIL Company That Caught the Eye of ‘Shark Tank’ – Launched in 2020 by a group of former men’s basketball managers and players, The Players Trunk started selling former athletes’ team apparel. Since NIL rules passed, they’ve added merchandise, trading cards, and other memorabilia using the likenesses of current athletes. The team asked the sharks for a 5% buy-in for $650,000 on a valuation of $13 million — a number the sharks mostly scoffed at. Cuban and Hart countered with 30% — which the team shut down.
🎾 Slinger Introduces Connexa Sports Technologies – Slinger announced the transformation of Slinger into Connexa Sports, a connected sports technology company that brings together Slinger, PlaySight, GAMEFACE.AI and Foundation Tennis.
🏃♂️ Endurance Events App Let’s Do This Backed by Serena Williams, Usain Bolt Raises $60 Million – Let’s Do This, an online marketplace for booking participation in endurance events, has raised a $60 million Series B funding round led by venture capital firms Craft Ventures and Headline. Also contributing to the round are Y Combinator, Morpheus Ventures, NFX and EQT.
Fitness
🏃♂️ Strava Acquires Prehab App Recover Athletics – Strava acquired Recover Athletics, an injury prevention platform for endurance athletes. Strengthening its subscription membership, Strava’s athlete social network wants to keep users active.
🏋️♀️ Atlon brings the tracking revolution to CrossFit – Atlon has just raised a pre-seed round of a total of DKK 3.5 million which will be used to further develop the technology and attract users to the platform. The investment is led by the venture fund Founderment. In addition, four experienced tech people participated in the round: Lasse Espeholt (Research Engineer, Google Brain), Zehan Wang (Founder & CTO of Magic Pony), Kåre Kjelstrøm (CTO of Concordium) and Damon Vestervand (Co-founder & CTO of Acter).
Wellness
🤝 Friendly Apps raises $3 million, pre-product, for apps that improve people’s well-being – Seed investors in Friendly Apps include BoxGroup, Weekend Fund, Shrug Capital, Day One Ventures, Betaworks Ventures, SRB Ventures, 305 Ventures and CoreVentures, plus founders and operators from Snap, TikTok, Instagram, Meta, Google, Tesla, Things and others.
🇪🇬 Egyptian health startup Esaal raises $1.7 million in seed funding – Esaal, a health and wellness startup, which has enjoyed unprecedented success in the MENA’s telemedicine industry, has closed a $1.7 million seed investment from A15.
🇺🇸 Remedy Place Adds $5M Ahead of NYC Opening – Expanding to New York City, wellness social club Remedy Place raised $5M in a funding round from its own membership base, as well as recording artists ZEDD and Rüfus du Sol.
💼 Flexa raises £2m to benchmark employee benefits for job seekers – Flexa, a platform aggregating the workplace benefits for job candidates, has raised £2.3m in seed funding led by Ada Ventures to expand its global reach.
Mental Health
🇮🇱 Group support platform Circles raises $16.5 million Series A – The Israeli startup’s platform matches into cohorts people experiencing similar life challenges such as divorce, grief, infertility, etc. for weekly meetings to give and receive emotional support, guided by trained and vetted mental health professionals. The round was led by Zeev Ventures, with participation of Lior Ron, Head of Uber Freight, along with existing investors NFX, Flint Capital, and Sir Ronald Cohen.
🍄 $2.7M Grant to UC Davis to Find New Addiction Treatments Related to Psychedelics – Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus plan to screen hundreds of compounds to discover new, nonhallucinogenic treatments for substance use disorders.
🌿 Cannabis, sex tech and psychedelics startups deserve more than stigma – Cannabis, sex tech and psychedelics are often lumped together under the “vice” category — a characterisation that prevents many VCs from investing in these spaces. But does that make sense?
📞 MMV Invests in PeerCollective – Peer counselling platform Peer Collective secured an undisclosed investment from MMV.
🇫🇷 moka.care raises $16 million for its corporate mental health service – French startup moka.care has raised a new $16 million Series A funding round. The company is focused on mental well-being in the workplace. Left Lane Capital is leading the round. Existing investor Singular is participating once again. VC firm Origins (co-founded by Blaise Matuidi, Ilan Abehassera and Salomon Aiach) as well as Antoine Griezmann are investing in the company for the first time.
Web 3
🇺🇸 Spencer Dinwiddie’s Web3 Social Media App Calaxy Announces $26 Million Investment Round – Calaxy, a Web3-focused social media app co-founded by Dallas Mavericks guard Spencer Dinwiddie, has raised a $26 million investment round. The HBAR Foundation and Animoca Brands were the co-leaders of the funding round, with Polygon also participating.
🇪🇺 ChromaWay Makes $2.14 Million Investment in Sports-Centric Web3 Company VRM – Blockchain technology company ChromaWay has made a €2 million strategic investment in VRM, a sports-centric Web3 company. VRM has made inroads in the European sports market, partnering on content and/or NFTs with EuroLeague Basketball, LaLiga, Roland Garros, and F1 Virtual Paddock Club.
🇬🇧 NFT Marketplace Ayoken Pulls $1.4M in Pre-Seed Funding – Ayoken, a London-based emerging NFT marketplace has raised the sum of $1.4 million in pre-seed. Investors involved in the pre-seed round include Founders Factory Africa, Texas-based Kon Ventures, Europe-based venture capital collective Crypto League, Ghana-based R9C Ventures, and Maximus Ventures.
⛓ Altan Insights Launches Alternative Asset Intelligence Platform, Raises $4M Seed Round – Altan Insights has raised a $4M seed round to continue building out its industry-leading platform. The round is being led by Slow Ventures with participation from additional existing investors, Courtside VC and Operator Partners, as well as new investors including Alexis Ohanian and Good Friends.
Apparel
👕 OMORPHO Closes $6 Million Investment Led by Leading Sports and Technology Venture Capital Firm KB Partners – The latest funding round includes participation from Greenchain Capital and Madison Square Garden Sports Corp.
Media
🇮🇱 Pixellot raising $161 million at $500 million valuation – Israel’s Pixellot, a provider of AI-automated sports production solutions, is raising $161 million at a $500 million valuation. The round is being led by Providence Strategic Growth (PSG), a growth equity firm.
💒 Tom Brady-backed Religion of Sports raises US$50m in Series B funding – US sports media production firm, Religion of Sports has secured US$50 million in a Series B funding round led by Shamrock Capital. The media house, which was founded by NFL legends Tom Brady and Michael Strahan alongside entrepreneur Gotham Chopra, also brought in backing from Elysian Park Ventures and Cerro Capital.
📹 IMG ARENA invests in computer vision specialist Signality – IMG ARENA announced a strategic investment in Swedish computer vision specialist Signality, enhancing data collection capabilities with leading computer vision and camera technologies.
Health
🇨🇭 Swiss startup Alithea Genomics raises about €972k to scale up innovative RNA-seq technology – Committed to developing solutions that simplify and streamline the foundations of medical research, Alithea Genomics has just raised about €972k in fresh funding. The capital injection was led by the Novalis Biotech Acceleration fund.
👵 Caregiving’s Impact on the Great Resignation and Healthcare Costs; Homethrive Secures $20 Million in Series B Funding to Reverse the Trend – Human Capital leads the round, with existing investors 7wireVentures and Pitango HealthTech joining to support rapid growth and nationwide advancement of Homethrive’s caregiving and aging in place platform.
👨💻 Plano Telehealth Startup Raises $14.1M – VitalTech, a digital health platform for remote patient care and monitoring, reported raising $14.1 million in equity from 18 investors. According to its SEC filing, the company is aiming to raise a total of about $16.2 million.
👩🔬 Oviva Therapeutics raises $11.5m seed and bags exclusive licensing – Oviva Therapeutics, the women’s health biotech company and a Cambrian Biopharma *PipeCo, announced an in-licensing agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for three patent families, as well as $11.5 million in seed funding, to develop first-in-class therapeutics to improve healthspan in women.
👩⚕️ Greater Good Health Raises $10 Million in Funding to Empower Nurse Practitioners and Improve Primary Care Access – Greater Good Health recently closed another round totaling $10 million led by LRVHealth, with participation from Martin Ventures, Health Velocity Capital, returning investor Optum Ventures and additional angel investors and renowned healthcare experts.
🤪 Women's sexual health startup Pique nails $4M seed – Pique, a virtual sexual health clinic focused on enjoyment rather than reproduction, has nailed $4 million in seed funding. Maveron led the round and was joined by Bread and Butter Ventures, Halogen, Progression Fund, Pitbull Ventures and the founders of Tend.
Esports & Metaverse
💰 WIN Reality Triples Revenue and Announces $45 Million Growth Investment From Spectrum Equity – WIN Reality, a virtual reality training and assessment platform for elite athletes, has received a $45 million growth equity investment from Spectrum Equity.
🎧 Slip·stream raises $7.5m from investors including Sony Music – Slip·stream has raised a $7.5m Series A funding round from investors including Sony Music, Third Prime and LightShed Ventures.
🎮 Esports fan engagement startup Stan lands $2.5 million – Blockchain-based esports fan engagement startup Stan has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst and participation from Better Capital and Eximius Ventures. Angel investors, including Coinbase's Nakul Gupta and Opensea's Aadil Mamujee also joined the funding round.
💰 Andreessen Horowitz launches $600m VC fund for games – Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has unveiled a $600 million fund to specifically invest in the games industry.
Nutrition
🧪 A Chicago Startup Turning Sugar Water Into Mycelium Flour Secures $2M – Hyfé Foods’ round was led by The Engine, an investment firm launched by MIT faculty and alumni. Other investors that participated in the round include Blue Horizon, Caffeinated Capital and Lifely, among others.
🚗 Ready meals startup Field Doctor targets £600k crowd investment – DTC frozen ready meals startup Field Doctor is lining up a £600k crowdfunding round to scale operations across the UK. Launched nationally in January 2021, the business makes meals for consumers with dietary conditions such as IBS.
🥛 Imagindairy Closes its Seed Round, Reaching a Total of $28M in Investment – The funding was led by Target Global and joined by the company's existing investors Strauss Group, Emerald Technology Ventures, Green Circle Foodtech Ventures, Collaborative Fund, New Climate Ventures, and FoodSparks by PeakBridge.
Fertility & Maternity
🇺🇸 Rael Raises $35M To Grow Its Organic Feminine Care Brand – Rael, a Buena Park-based organic feminine care and beauty brand, has raised $35 million in a Series B funding round. The funding was led by the venture arms of two Asian companies: Japanese gaming firm Colopl’s Colopl Next and South Korean conglomerate Shinsegae Group’s Signite Partners. Aarden Partners and ST Capital also participated, as did existing investors Mirae Asset and Unilever Ventures.
🌍 Cayaba Care Secures $12M in Series A Funding to Expand Maternity Health Access and Services to Underserved Populations – Cayaba Care, a maternity health startup, closed a $12 million Series A round led by Seae Ventures and Kapor Capital and includes new investors Wellington Partners, Citi Impact Fund and Rhia Ventures.
Angels, Funds, & Accelerators
💵 Ex-Just Eat CEO Mulls Raising VC Fund After Cutting Angel Checks – David Buttress, the former chief executive officer of UK food delivery firm Just Eat, is weighing plans to create his own venture capital fund after a making nearly a dozen investments on his own.
🤑 Europe's big sports deals: Governing bodies resist PE incursion – Private equity investors cannot seem to get enough of European sports investments, but actions by both English soccer's Premier League and World Rugby underscore that PE money is not always welcome.
⚽️ Inside the Chelsea Sale: Deep Pockets, Private Promises and Side Deals – Britain’s government has cleared the sale of the Premier League soccer team. But to win approval, the new owners had to agree to a set of unusual conditions.
Sports Betting
🎲 Alloy Sports competes for a shot at $180K in seed funding – The University of Chicago's New Venture Challenge offers the Baltimore County-based sports betting company a chance to make a name for itself and attract angel investors from around the country.
Experiential
🎉 Houston Exponential acquired by local media and innovation group – Gow Companies has acquired of the assets of Houston Exponential. Gow Companies' portfolio includes InnovationMap, as well as CultureMap, SportsMap, sports festival provider Pokatok, sports tech accelerator Pokatok Labs, ESPN radio, a sports tech-focused SPAC, and other strategic entities.
Some Tweets
P.S.
It’s good to have test cricket back in my life after a period of disillusionment. Looking forward to getting stuck into some serious TMS over the summer… It’s going to take time but I’m excited about the dawn of the Key-Stokes-McCullum era. Long live the red ball!
Yours in sports,
Ed
—
Ed Rhys
Co-Founder / Skin In The Game
www.skininthegamegroup.com
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