Impact investing – Fan Controlled Football – A smart contact lens – Digital contraceptives – Wearable biosesing – Baby Food – Dermatology telehealth – Liquid Death
Week 29
Skin In The Game is a weekly newsletter dedicated to investing in sports. We highlight the startups and investors shaping the future of sports and its adjacent markets.
We also run a regulated startup investment club connecting investors with visionary sports, health, and entertainment startups – a platform for investors and founders to collaborate and co-invest.
Get in touch if you want to find out more.
Confessions
I was recently asked by a friend with no skin in the angel investing game why people invest in startups. It got me thinking about the underlying drivers of investment decisions beyond the money angle – the story behind the story.
On the surface level, angels invest for a bunch of different reasons:
💰 Wealth creation (and tax mitigation);
🤩 Status and professional / social network;
💡 Intellectual curiosity and personal development;
🤯 And then there’s always good old fashioned sadomasochism…
But I have a theory, a word that links it all together. Most investors put money into early-stage startups because they are seeking impact.
I’ve always found “impact investing” an appealing concept, but a somewhat difficult term. Surely all investing is impact investing? It’s just that not all impact is good!
What happens exactly when we invest? What do the key protagonists involved in the process – founders and investors – actually get out of it? The precise impact is hard/impossible to quantify as there are so many intangibles involved in the value transfer, so many layers of value. The incentive might be financial. But it's just as much personal. Perhaps even social. Here’s how I see it:
Founders benefit from having the financial resources to develop new technologies, test and validate customer offerings, iterate business models, and scale operations. But it's not a free lunch. With investment comes pressure to deliver. Investors should have empathy for the challenges of entrepreneurship and the gruelling nature of the journey. To foster this, founders should communicate openly and share their journeys with investors.
Angels benefit from successful exits, and I’m a firm believer that this goes beyond the financial. It's about contributing something meaningful – both on a personal level, by working with founders to help them achieve their goals, but also on a global level, by helping to drive innovation and broad-based social betterment. When we invest more than money, we receive more than money in return.
The world also benefits from startup investment, and the social element shouldn't be overlooked – surplus capital skilfully deployed enables us to bring the future forward, accelerating positive outcomes for people and the planet. The impact of a successful investment (and even some unsuccessful ones) should be measured by its contribution to the long term prospects of our species and planet, not just the number of 0s it generates in a bank account.
It's hard to talk about the social angle without feeling a bit tokenistic. ESG has exploded in recent years and the fringe has gone mainstream, inevitably getting corporatised and diluted in the process (when timeless principles get amalgamated and acronymised you know they have been hollowed out of real meaning, as Nietzsche alluded to when he said, “That for which we find words is already dead in our hearts”). Nonetheless, impact occurs on multiple levels and we must remember that profit-seeking at the startup level is a promising driver of global progress. Far more so than political hand-wringing and social media virtue-signalling. This is impact decentralised – an antidote to the Big Impact peddled by policymakers and captains of industry with a vested interested in perpetuating the status quo.
“We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”
– Joseph Campbell
SportsTech is rich terrain for those seeking impact. As retail and institutional capital pours into ESG funds, it’s exciting to visualise how sports and health investing might slot into the impact investing meta-narrative. I believe that SportsTech needs to get better at positioning itself within the impact investment universe alongside ClimateTech and other “Techs”, because I genuinely can’t think of a vertical better suited to creating positive outcomes for individuals and communities. The technologisation and scaling of sports has the potential to transform our physiology, our mental health and our culture. This bodes well for new venture funds focused on the sports niche, enabling them to compete for love from heavyweight allocators like pension funds, insurers, and even SWFs. To make this happen, VCs need to become better storytellers.
In the world of investing, impact tends to be conceptualised as one-way. Investors put a dent in the universe, but impact is, in fact, reflexive. When we invest, we have an impact on the founder/startup/market/world. But the founder/startup/market/world also puts a dent in us. It works both ways. So it’s interesting to consider the other side of the equation and how the intangibles of angel investing might drive investor psychology and behaviour. How can we do a better job of engaging people and unlocking the benefits of angel investing in their lives?
There is another way of conceptualising impact, and that is to consider the way that investment capital creates the most valuable thing of all – time.
An investor's surplus cash gives founders the time they need to test, validate, and scale their ideas. By driving innovation on a micro level, founders and the investors who back them are buying the inhabitants of our planet more time whilst we figure out how to live more sustainably, more elegantly, more beautifully.
Time is our most precious resource, with the greatest potential for impact. Perhaps by re-conceptualising investment capital as time – given and received – investors and founders might deploy it more mindfully and responsibly?
Deal flow
🦄 FanDuel founder and Sequoia bet on Spanish-language fantasy sports app Draftea – Draftea, which calls itself the first daily fantasy sports company in Spanish-speaking Latin America, emerged from stealth mode on the heels of a $13.2 million fundraise led by Kaszek with participation from Sequoia, Bullpen, and Nigel Eccles, founder and former CEO of sports-betting giant FanDuel.
👁 Mojo Vision raises $45m to develop smart contact lens sports tech – Mojo Vision says new partnerships with connected fitness and sports wearable companies, along with $45m in additional funding, will accelerate the development of smart contact lens-based products that provide frictionless, real-time information on athletic performance. Amazon Alexa Fund, PTC, Edge Investments, and HiJoJo Partners participated in Mojo Vision’s Series B-1 funding round, joining existing investors including NEA, Liberty Global Ventures, Advantech Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, Motorola Solutions and Open Field Capital.
⚽️ Sport Republic acquires ownership of Southampton Football Club – Southampton has confirmed that Sport Republic, a London-based investment firm, has acquired a controlling stake in the football club. The company has purchased the shareholding of the club held by Mr Gao, who purchased an 80 per cent stake in Saints in 2017. Katharina Liebherr will retain her minority shareholding.
🏈 New Fan Controlled Football Teams Tackle Metaverse After $40M Raise – Following a $40 million Series A funding round, the experimental sports startup is taking a big step into the metaverse, handing management responsibilities for two of its eight teams to existing NFT communities: the Bored Ape Yacht Club and the Gutter Cat Gang.
📖 Football Play-Calling Wearable GoRout Raises $500k – Football play-calling software GoRout has raised $500,000 from Minnesota-based venture capital firm Traction Capital. GoRout’s product includes a screen worn on players’ waists during practices that visualizes play calls sent by coaches.
🗞 New York Times to buy subscription sports site the Athletic for $550m – The New York Times has agreed to buy subscription-based sports site the Athletic for $550m (£400m) in cash, as the 170-year-old newspaper adds more digital content to grab subscribers. Founded in 2016, the Athletic had 1.2 million subscribers as of December, and covers more than 200 clubs and teams in the US and around the world.
⚖️ Weight care management startup Found lands $100M at a $600M valuation – Just two and a half months after emerging from stealth, weight care management startup Found has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $600 million. WestCap — a growth equity firm founded by former Blackstone and Airbnb executive Laurence Tosi — led the investment, with participation from IVP, The Chernin Group, G9 Ventures and Able Partners. Existing backers GV, Define and founding investor Atomic also put money in the round, along with angel investors such as Instacart CEO Fidji Simo and Everly Health CEO Julia Cheek.
🏋️♂️ PureGym secures a $400M investment from private equity firm – The deal values PureGym north of $2bn, with KKR holding a significant minority stake.
🃏 Fanatics Pried Baseball Cards From Topps. Now Fanatics Is Buying Topps – The new Fanatics company, valued last year at over $10bn, accelerated its launch with the $500 million purchase of the company synonymous with baseball cards for decades.
👩⚕️ Members-only concierge emergency-care startup raises $30 million – The company offers concierge emergency services for its members, including imaging like MRIs, CTs, and X-rays at one of its clinics and virtual triage over the phone. It also offers some medical services in patients' homes. It has raised $30 million in Series A funding plus $5.1 million in debt financing. Torch Capital and Denali Growth Partners led the round, which also included investments from Strand Equity, Read Capital, former CEO of MyNexus Juan Vallarino, Shake Shack Chief Marketing Officer Jay Livingston, the Mount Sinai Ventures founder Adam Henick, and former Moat President Aniq Rahman.
🧠 Othership raises – The company raised $2m from On Deck, Vine Ventures, Sam Corcos, and 70+ angels to scale Othership's app and physical spaces.
💰 Ophelia rasies $50m – For opioid users, rehab fails 90% of the time without access to medication. Ophelia’s platform virtually connects providers to patients, who are able to secure prescriptions on the same day of the visit, from the privacy of their homes. Ophelia raised $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors including Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and Refactor Capital.
🩺 UpLift Raises $8M in Funding to Integrate Psychiatry Into the Mental Healthcare Delivery Platform – UpLift, the first vertically integrated mental healthcare delivery system, announced their expansion into psychiatry as well as the closing of $8M in secondary funding. The round was led by B Capital Group with additional participation from Vivek Garipalli, Bay Gross, Bobby Green, as well as pro rata financing from several others.
🇧🇭 Calo raises $13.5 million Seed round – Bahrain-based foodtech Calo has raised $13.5 million in its Seed funding round, co-led by Khwarizmi Ventures, Nuwa Capital, and STV, with participation from Al Faisaliah Group, Vision Ventures, 500 Startups, Savour Ventures, Nama Ventures; as well as other angel investors.
🍗 Israel’s Future Meat raises $347m, largest investment for cultured meat firm to date – Israel’s Future Meat, a Jerusalem-based biotechnology firm that creates chicken, lamb, and beef products made from animal cells, has raised $347 million in a Series B funding round, the largest single investment in a cultured meat company to date. The investment was co-led by ADM Ventures, the investment arm of Chicago-based food multinational Archer-Daniels-Midland, and an unnamed global tech investor, Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founder and CEO of Future Meat, told Bloomberg on Saturday. US meat company Tyson Foods, the second-largest processor and marketer of meat products and an existing investor in Future Meat, also participated in the round.
🍛 Jack & Annie’s closes $23M; aims to make jackfruit hero among meat alternatives – The round was co-led by Creadev and Desert Bloom and included participation from Wheatsheaf and existing investors Beta Angels and InvestEco.
💻 SIGNA Sports United, Leading Global Sports E-Commerce and Technology Platform, Goes Public – The combined Company will operate as SIGNA Sports United.
👨⚕️ Well Raises $70M in Series B Funding to Grow Digital Health Improvement Platform – Well, a consumer-focused health improvement platform that combines leading-edge artificial intelligence, advanced behavioral economic techniques and on-demand human guidance, announced the completion of $70 million in Series B equity financing. The round was led by Valeas Capital Partners, a recently launched investor-operator focused firm led by Ed Woiteshek and Rob Little (former Hellman & Friedman colleagues).
👩⚖️ Clue raises €16M to expand team and begin roll-out of Clue Birth Control, its FDA-cleared digital contraceptive – Clue empowers women and people with cycles to make better choices for themselves around their menstrual, sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing, starting with personalised period tracking. The new funding was led by Balderton Capital and Future Positive Capital.l
😴 Sunrise secures €6.5 million in funding to deploy its sleep apnea diagnostic solution internationally – Sunrise, a healthtech company founded in 2015 in Belgium, has just closed a €3.25 million fundraising round. Led by Kurma Partners, this round of financing, in which the Vives-IUF fund linked to UCLouvain and Namur Invest also participated, has the objective of launching and internationally marketing the company's first diagnostic product for sleep apnea. In addition to this €3.25 million round of funding, there is also €3.25 million in non-dilutive funding from the European Innovation Council, launched in 2021 by the European Commission to transform scientific ideas into promising innovations, and the Walloon Region.
🧘♀️ Gaia Acquires Yoga International, a Leading Digital Yoga Service – Gaia, a subscription video-streaming service dedicated to conscious media and serving a global conscious community, acquired Yoga International, a digital-only media platform and community with paid subscribers around the world.
🦈 MAXPRO raises – The company raised $500K from Mark Cuban after appearing on Shark Tank.
🦠 ZOE secures additional Series B funding in preparation for UK launch – ZOE operates the world’s largest nutrition science study (PREDICT) with the goal of improving health outcomes globally. The company is known in the UK for running the ZOE COVID Study, the world's largest community science project for symptoms of COVID-19 and related health issues, with over 4 million contributors globally.
💪 Level 5 Capital Partners Acquires 112 Owned or Sub-Franchised Orangetheory Fitness Studios – The heart-rate based interval training fitness franchise Orangetheory offers science-backed, technology-tracked and coach-inspired workouts throughout its 1,300+ studios globally. This acquisition marks an expansion and strengthening of the L5 Fitness platform in Michigan, Illinois, Utah and Missouri.
⌚️ XENSENSIO raises – The wearable biosesing company raised CHF 4.2 million in a first close to expand development of proprietary platform, and accelerate market launch.
🚴♂️ Cult.fit goes on acquisition spree – Fitness and wellness platform Cult.fit has acquired at-home cardio-equipment brands RPM fitness, Fitkit, Onefitplus and outdoor bicycles brand, Urban Terrain.
👩💼 Kiira Health raises $4M to transform healthcare for young women – Kiira Health, a Los Angeles-based healthcare technology company, recently closed a $4M seed round led by 500 Global and Forum VC with participation from Serena Ventures, California Healthcare Foundation, and more. Kiira's strategy incorporates a mobile app for 24/7 access to virtual care, personalized data-driven insights, and culture-centered telehealth solutions for gynecology, primary care, and mental health.
🧈 Plant-Based Dairy Company Oddlygood Global Raises $28 Million – Oddlygood Global, a spinoff of Valio, one of Finland's premiere food companies, closes its first round of funding with an investment of $28 million from the private equity division of Helsinki-based Mandatum Asset Management.
👶 Baby Food Startup Yumi Notches $67 Million In Funding From Jazz Ventures Partners And Anne Wojcicki, Among Others – Yumi closed a $67 million Series B led by San Francisco-based biotech fund Jazz Ventures Partners, AF Ventures and 23andme cofounder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, bringing the company’s total funding to $79 million. Previous investors include NEA and Brand Foundry, as well as the founders of Warby Parker, Harry’s, Sweetgreen and Uber, and celebrities like Gabrielle Union and Snoop Dogg, who calls the company a “game-changer.”
🧘♀️ Triyoga gets acquired – United Fitness Brands announced the latest addition to its portfolio – Triyoga UK – A much respected brand and leader in the boutique fitness space who over the last 20 years have built a globally recognised yoga brand.
🥗 Marley Spoon to Acquire Australian Ready-to-Heat Meal Company Chefgood and Place Equity – Marley Spoon, a global subscription-based meal kit provider, has entered into an agreement to acquire Chefgood, a Melbourne-based ready-to-heat meal provider.
👩💻 Dermatology startup Formel Skin raises €30m in Germany’s largest healthtech Series A – German dermatology telehealth startup Formel Skin has just raised €30m in Series A funding, as pandemic-fuelled interest in telemedicine continues and Germany flexes its muscles as a healthtech powerhouse. It’s the largest series A round for a German healthtech to date, according to Crunchbase. Formel Skin’s Series A was led by Paris-based VC firm Singular and German healthtech investor Heal Capital, which earlier this year closed its €100m fund, with participation from previous investors Cherry Ventures, Heartcore Capital and Vorwerk Ventures.
🏓 Pickleball Central Announces a Majority Investment from Dundon Capital Partners – Pickleball Central, the largest company in the world devoted to the fastest growing sport in America, has closed a majority investment from Dallas-based investment firm Dundon Capital Partners LLC.
💁♀️ Flourish raises $1m – Flourish is an app that helps women get healthy for good by teaching women to build sustainable habits across the full spectrum of behavioral health: nutrition, hydration, sleep, stress, relationships, and movement. It raised $1M in pre-seed funding led by True Wealth Ventures.
🧃 Liquid Death lands $75M more to expand the brand – Liquid Death, a water brand that began life in 2018 with a funny video to first test the concept, is deadly serious about its growth prospects. The LA-based outfit, which sells canned mountain water from the Alps that will “murder your thirst,” has just landed $75 million in Series C funding led by the startup studio Science, which helped launch the company and now owns a “strong minority” position.
🇺🇸 ianacare Raises $12.1M to Fundamentally Change the Family Caregiver Experience – ianacare, which provides comprehensive, tech-enabled caregiver support through employers and health plans, raised a $12.1 million Series A investment led by Greycroft with participation from 8VC, SemperVirensVC, Able Partners, and Brown Alumni Group, along with follow-on investments from existing investors Slow, Founder Collective, Indicator Ventures, Entree Capital, Cue Ball, Service Provider Capital, and AARP.
🇮🇳 Neeraj Chopra joins funding round for influencer marketing startup – The Olympic gold medallist invested in a "strategic round" which saw the company raise USD 1 million (about Rs 7.4 crore) from a clutch of investors, including Karandeep Anand (formerly with Meta), Varun Alagh of Mamaearth, Anupam Mittal of People Group and stand-up comedians Zakir Khan and Kanan Gill.
🎟 Project Admission Raises $9 Million to Expand Ticket Monetisation Features – Ticket monetisation startup Project Admission has raised a $9 million seed funding round led by investment firm Anthemis Group. The startup’s software is already integrated into ticket platforms such as SeatGeek and Tickets.com. Kansas City area-based Flyover Capital also contributed to the funding round.
Some tweets
I’m loving Newcastle United’s new talent acquisition strategy, which seems to be buying players with silly release clauses who are instrumental to the survival prospects of their relegation rivals. Nothing like thinking big at the start of a new year…
Yours in sports,
Ed
—
Edward Rhys
Founder / Skin In The Game
www.skininthegamegroup.com
A favour
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Skin In The Game is a startup investment club connecting investors with visionary sports, health, and entertainment startups. We provide a regulated platform for investors and entrepreneurs to collaborate and co-invest.
SKIN IN THE GAME LIMITED is registered in England and Wales under Company Number 13200102 and with the FCA as an Appointed Representative with FRN 946089. SKIN IN THE GAME LIMITED is an Appointed Representative of Finex LLP which is authorised and regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) with firm reference number 507537.