Sports investing 3.0 – Women's soccer – AI personal trainer – Virtual lifestyles of the rich & famous – Personalised vitamins – Microbiome investment – Self-Hypnosis apps – Incentivised Wellness
Week 35
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 investment club connecting investors with visionary sports, health, and entertainment startups – a platform for investors, founders, and industry experts to collaborate and co-invest.
*** We’re currently raising a pre-seed round to re-engineer sports investing by connecting startup investors with industry experts. Get in touch to find out more. ***
Confessions
Last week I wrote about thinking big. It’s time to talk about what that means for Skin In The Game.
We believe there’s a better way to invest in sports startups – by connecting investors to industry experts who can de-risk opportunities.
Emerging technologies like AI, Blockchain, Psychedelics, and the Metaverse present sports investors with massive opportunities – and huge risks. Angels seeking to invest in ground-breaking startups would benefit from expert guidance, but have no way of systematically connecting with experts.
An investment platform where startup deal flow is derisked by domain experts would be a game-changer for investors, founders, and experts. We’re building that. Think of Skin In The Game as an angel syndicate fused with an expert network.
Many angel syndicate groups claim to leverage the expertise of their members. We’re the first to systematically source, derisk, and promote investment opportunities via a decentralised network of industry experts. Just as Airbnb monetised excess property capacity, Skin In The Game monetises excess knowledge capacity by aligning interests between domain experts, angel investors, and startup founders.
The benefits for users are compelling:
Investors get early-stage deal flow and insights curated by domain experts, enabling angels to build their wealth and impact.
Founders leverage the specialist expertise and social influence of domain experts to source game-changing investment and advice.
Experts build life-changing wealth by exploiting their informational edge, aligning interests with founders and investors.
Why now? Sourcing, screening, and promoting deals with decentralised industry expertise wasn’t possible before. Now, with the productisation of deal structuring and legals, the economics of SPV creation are changing – which means that even relatively small deals are viable for investors, founders, and experts. So, we can incentivise experts to help us by cutting them into deals and enabling them to share some upside.
Where does sports fit into all of this? SportsTech is deep tech. The sheer complexity of emerging sports technologies and investment themes demands a new approach – one defined by deep domain expertise and long-term economic alignment. Sports offers a unique route into the angel investing market. It's engaging and universally popular, a gateway drug for investors – it’s also home to powerful influencers, and a rising tide of investment. And of course, there’s the impact angle.
Think big, act small. Our endgame is a vertically integrated fintech platform where industry experts can lead their own deals, monetising their expertise and influence whilst supercharging returns for investors and founders. To get there, we're raising a chunk of pre-seed capital to build, test, and iterate our way to product-market fit. This means hacking together a prototype using email and no-code hosting solutions. Once we've tested and validated the concept we'll build a custom platform.
In this way, we can re-engineer angel investing, derisking startup opportunities across key sports investment themes like Metaverse, blockchain, AI, psychedelics, and NFTs. We can help angel investors make better decisions, so they can scale their wealth and impact.
If that’s big enough for you – and you’d like to play a role in making it happen – I’d love to hear from you.
Deal flow
📱 Fitness app FitOn raises $40M, acquires corporate wellness platform Peerfit – Digital fitness and wellness company FitOn has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Delta-v Capital. FitOn is also expanding its reach in wellness by acquiring Tampa-based corporate wellness platform Peerfit. The round included participation from Accel, Maverick Ventures, Second Avenue Partners and Mantis VC, along with a strategic investment from United Talent Agency’s venture fund, UTA VC. The new investment brings the company’s total funding to $70M.
⚽️ Angel City add new investors in Series A financing – The National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City have closed a Series A financing round, which included investment firm Seven Seven Six, Initialized Capital and several new backers.
🦄 Virtual Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Athletes and Celebs Pay $2.9M for Islands in Metaverse – Former world no. 1 tennis player Ana Ivanovic and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Marco Verratti are among several sports stars to buy virtual islands in The Sandbox, the blockchain-based virtual world computer game. Islands were also bought by Bayern Munich winger Kingsley Coman, Swiss tennis player Stan Wawrinka and Dan Holzmann, co-owner of the Swiss soccer club FC Basel.
💧 Erewhon Market Backed Hydration Company, BARCODE, Closes Fundraising – Premium functional beverage company BARCODE that takes on the traditional hydration heavyweights by unlocking consumers' greatest potential with healthy nutrients, has successfully closed $2.2M in their latest fundraising round with commitments from a top-tier group of institutional investors, celebrities, and athletes. This funding round included participation from Trousdale Ventures, Midnight Venture Partners, Cathexis Ventures, Silas Capital, Gaingels, Erewhon Market, as well as music recording artist and television producer Kelly Rowland, and NBA Basketball player Maurice Harkless.
😴 Bodymatter raises ~$3M Series Seed funding to unlock the perfect night of sleep with SleepWatch – Bodymatter, a precision health technology company harnessing the power of technology, data, clinical science, and AI to unlock new levels of human health, well-being, and performance, has raised nearly $3M USD in Series Seed funding with participation from early-stage investors, venture, family offices, and entrepreneurs.
🤩 What We Know About NightCap, a New Fund Focused on Creating Influencer-Driven Businesses – LA-based investment firm The Chernin Group has reportedly joined forces with an Austin, Texas-based talent agency on a new fund that will snap up businesses and pair them with social media influencers.
🇸🇦 Saudi sports-tech Grintafy raises $2.1M in a bridge round – Saudi-based football talent discovery startup Grintafy has raised SR8 million ($2.1M) in a bridge round which included the Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Center.
🦠 Seventure Partners announces first closing of BlueForwardFund – Seventure Partners, one of Europe’s leaders in financing innovation and a world-leader in life science microbiome investment, under the leadership of Isabelle de Cremoux, announces the first closing of its new fund, BlueForwardFund, with a final close target of over €130M.
🇮🇳 Health tech startup Goqii raises $50M to expand offerings, go global – Healthtech startup Goqii has raised $50 million in a Series-C funding round led by Sumeru Ventures. The round comprised a mix of equity including preference share and debt investments.
🧅 Elo Raises $5M in Seed Funding – Elo, a San Francisco, CA-based Smart Nutrition company turning food from the leading cause of disease to medicine by harnessing the power of at-home testing, AI, and nutritional coaching, raised $5m in seed funding. Investors include Will Ventures, founded by former NFL player Isaiah Kacyvenski; Re:food, founded by Gustaf Brandberg; Petteri Lahtela, Founder of Oura; Robin Thurston, CEO of Outside; Ilkka Paananen, Founder of Supercell; David Helgason, Founder of Unity; Jeremy Bloom, former Olympic skier and CEO of Integrate; Ed Baker, board member at Whoop; Alex Biega, player on the Toronto Maple Leafs; and many more.
🔥 Ro Funding Round Brings Health Startup’s Valuation to $7 Billion – Telehealth startup Ro said its valuation has risen to $7 billion with the addition of $150 million in funds that the company, best known for selling erectile dysfunction drugs to millenials, will use to bridge online and in-person care.
👀 Reveri, a Self-Hypnosis App, Secures Financing – Reveri Health, which enables anyone in the world to experience the benefits of self-hypnosis after a single 10-minute session, closed $1.8 million in seed financing led by InReach Ventures and with participation by Background Capital, plus angel investors, Bobby Lo, Joe Greenstein, Andrew Artz, Joseph Rubinsztain and Eduardo Vilar. The funding will be used to grow the team with current job openings listed here and further enhance the in-app experience.
🇮🇳 Incentivized Wellness Platform Growfitter Raises Additional $120K from DevX Venture Fund – GrowFitter, India’s biggest incentivised wellness platform, has raised additional $120K from DevX Venture Fund, the investment arm of DevX Coworking & Accelerator.
🧒 Oath Advances Maternal & Child Health Innovation with $9M in Seed Funding – The company has raised an additional $6M in funding to help it build digital support communities for every stage of parenthood from fertility to early childhood. The deal was led by Michael Yang and Christina Farr at OMERS Ventures with participation from Eros Resmini, former CMO of Discord and managing partner of The Mini Fund. This brings the company’s total funding to $9M.
💰 LifeSpeak To Acquire Wellbeats – LifeSpeak, a leading mental health and total wellbeing platform for employers, health plans, and insurance companies, has acquired US based Wellbeats for up to US$92.5M. Wellbeats, a Minnesota-based market-leading provider of an on-demand, software-as-a-service physical wellbeing platform, serves a diverse client base of 400+ US and international enterprise clients.
💊 Vitamins business Vitl gets an additional £6.2m cash injection – Vitl, a personalised vitamins business, has raised £6.2 million. Current and previous investors include Alex Chesterman, the founder of Zoopla and the New York-listed Cazoo, and Richard Pennycook, a former boss of The Co-operative Group.
🏕 Sekr Raises $2.25M in Seed Funding to Improve the Outdoor Travel Experience For All – Sekr, the mobile platform simplifying the outdoor travel experience, closed $2.25M in seed financing round to further its mission of empowering people to pursue connection with the outdoors and its communities. The round was led by Storyteller Overland, Backstage Capital, Techstars, Ad Astra Ventures, Crescent Ridge Ventures, and Andy Ballester, co-founder of GoFundMe.
👊 Home fitness startup PunchLab closes a new € 840K investment round – PunchLab, a home fitness app, has closed a new investment round of 840k euros with the participation of Primo Ventures, AZ ELTIF - ALIcrowd (Azimut Group), LVenture Group and Sport Horizon Holding.
🤖 Altis raises nearly $7MM to bring AI personal trainer to life, first at Hyatt hotels – Altis, the world's first AI personal trainer, which provides an unparalleled hyper-personalized fitness program, with interactive real-time coaching and program modification based on a user's live performance, launched at Hyatt portfolio property Chicago Athletic Association hotel. On the heels of its successful debut at CES last month, Altis is also announcing the raise of nearly $7 million in Seed funding led by Tel Aviv fund PentaLab, which is run by the founders of Viber and Juno.
🇨🇦 Vancouver’s Train Fitness secures pre-seed funding to transform workout tracking – The Vancouver-based company bills itself as the “world’s first app that can detect exercises and track reps” Now it's raised a $540,000 pre-seed fundraising round led by Vienna’s Calm/Storm Ventures.
🥄 Splendid Spoon Raises $12 Million in Series B Funding Led by Nicoya – Splendid Spoon, a women-owned and -operated national meal delivery service specialising in ready-made plant-based soups, bowls and smoothies, closed $12 million in a funding round led by Nicoya (N!cks, El Taco Truck, Foodiq, Inika Superfoods etc.). Additional investors who contributed include Danone Manifesto Ventures (Forager Project, Harmless Harvest, Farmer's Fridge), Torch Capital (Compass, Sweetgreen), Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Rent the Runway co-founder Jennifer Fleiss and Ashok and Meera Vasudevan, founders of Tasty Bite, which was recently acquired by Mars. Both Torch and Ohanian contributed to previous Splendid Spoon rounds.
💵 Next Gen Foods Debuts TiNDLE in the United States and Closes a Record-Breaking $100 Million Series A Funding Round – Next Gen Foods closed a $100 million Series A funding round – the largest Series A to date for a plant-based meat company.
🧫 With $200M in new cash, Synthego wants to become the manufacturing bedrock for CRISPR. But where are its customers? – After nearly a decade developing CRISPR-based tools to help researchers in academia and biotech run their experiments, Synthego is getting into a new game: manufacturing.
🇬🇧 Britain’s JD Sports buys up UAE-based GymNation – Select Investments, a unit of Select Group, has announced the sale of GymNation to British sports-fashion retailer JD Sports.
Some tweets
I felt for 15-year-old figure-skating prodigy Kamila Valieva, who, in the wake of an epic doping scandal, came fourth in the women’s single event the Winter Olympics. Her speech afterwards is one for the ages…
“Everyone has a gold medal, everyone, but not me. I hate skating. I hate it. I hate this sport. I will never skate again. Never.”
I hear you, Kamila. We’ve all been there!
Yours in sports,
Ed
—
Ed Rhys
Founder / Skin In The Game
www.skininthegamegroup.com
A favour
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. If you did, please share with friends who you think will get something out of it.
And if you can spare the time, get in touch with your thoughts. Whether founder, investor, or sports fan, your input will help me to improve what I’m doing and better serve the Skin In The Game community.
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.