What sports cannot do – €300M metaverse tech fund – Player-owned sports games – Nutritional brain supplements – Connected smart rowers – Social beverages – Vintage jerseys
Week 36
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 that connects sports investors with industry experts across emerging technologies like the Metaverse, Web3, AI, and Psychedelics.
We’re currently raising a pre-seed round to re-engineer sports investing. Get in touch to find out more.
Confessions
It’s been hard to concentrate on anything other than Ukraine this week. I typically don’t spend a lot of time engaging with news, preferring books and long-form content to the dopamine rush of breaking headlines and rolling coverage, but I’ve found myself doom-scrolling Twitter between deep work sessions, calls, and family time.
That family time has felt all the more precious, seeing families displaced and torn apart by the chaos engulfing Ukraine. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.
This is perhaps the first war that combines near-total media visibility with a sense of utter powerlessness. That is a truly horrifying combination and it’s hard to escape the feeling that regardless of sanctions and social media posturing by global brands, we’re sleepwalking to disaster.
In times like this, sports struggles to register. Yes, it’s great to see clubs, leagues, and federations coming out in support of Ukraine, but the spectacle of sporting events feels trivial compared to the scale of human suffering on display.
So, I’m not going to pontificate on the power of sports to transcend war. Or comment on the geopolitical environment like I know what I’m talking about. The truth is, I know little about the region or the torment that the people of Ukraine are going through. But the more I learn, the more I admire their courage, creativity, and sense of community.
I’m running out of words, which is never a good look for a writer. My heart goes out to the blameless victims of this war and I pray to every God we have for their deliverance in the days ahead.
Deal flow
📱 Fast Break Labs Raises $6M in Seed Funding – Fast Break Labs, a San Francisco-based web3 startup focused on building player-owned sports games, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Patron with participation from Pantera Capital. Other participants in the early round include Collab+Currency, Solana Ventures, South Park Commons, and Angel investors Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai’s Family Office (Blue Pool Capital), Marc Merill (Co-Founder of Riot Games), Aneel Ranadive (Sacramento Kings Co-Owner and Founder of Soma Capital), Ryan Spoon (COO of Sorare), John Robinson (President and COO of 100 Thieves), Thomas Vu (Riot Games), Jason Choi (GP at Spartan Group), Wengie Huang (Co-Founder of Nyan Heroes), and others.
⛅️ Cloud production platform Tagboard raises $8 million – Tagboard has raised $8 million in a series A funding round valuing the startup at $40 million. The series A was co-led by Grayhawk Capital and Next Frontier Capital. Sinclair Broadcast Group and Minnesota Vikings owners' WISE Ventures also participated in the funding round. Both Sinclair and the Vikings use Tagboard.
🎮 UK’s VC firm Hiro Capital launches a €300M second fund to invest in videogames and metaverse tech – London and Luxembourg-based Hiro Capital, an entrepreneur-led tech venture capital fund focused on video games, Metaverse technologies, creator platforms, and gamified fitness, has launched Hiro Capital II, a €300M fund.
🥞 Joe Burrow, Travis Kelce and Sloane Stephens Among Dozens of Superstar Athletes to Invest in Kodiak – Kodiak, the fast-growing brand known for its suite of better-for-you protein-powered breakfast staples, announced an investment by Patricof Co, a highly specialised private investment platform for professional athletes. Joe Burrow, Travis Kelce, Sloane Stephens, CC Sabathia, Rudy Gay, Adam Henrique, and several dozen other athletes participated as a part of the investment. P/Co joins existing investor L Catterton, the world's leading consumer investment firm which acquired Kodiak last year, to fuel its retail expansion and support its continued growth.
🚣♀️ Aviron raises $18.5M as it plans to expand its entertainment content – Stripes led the round, with participation from Global Founders Capital, Formic Ventures, and 24-Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov. Aviron’s connected smart rowers have built-in touchscreens that feature a number of games meant to be played while exercising.
👕 Fanatics, Jay-Z buying vintage sports jersey maker Mitchell & Ness for $250M – Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin is teaming with rappers Jay-Z, Meek Mill and Lil Baby – and Maverick Carter, a business partner of LeBron James – on the purchase. The D’Amelio family of TikTok stars also is part of the group that is purchasing Mitchell & Ness.
💪 Antetokounmpo among new Wave Sports + Entertainment investors during $27M round – Sports media startup Wave Sports + Entertainment has raised a $27M Series B funding that included investment from Bucks F Giannis Antetokounmpo. TZP Group led the round alongside participation from Crossbeam Venture Partners, GPS Investment Partners, Verance Capital and Nimble Ventures. Wave’s previous investors include Browns QB Baker Mayfield and ESPN analyst Jay Williams as the startup raised $32M in July '20.
🧃 Social beverage brand Cann raises $27m – Cann, the leading cannabis-infused beverage company, closed a $27M Series A funding round coming from fresh institutional capital, existing investors like Imaginary Ventures doubling down, and a roster of new celebrity investors including Nina Dobrev, Adam Devine, Zoey Deutch, Jordan Cooper, Sara Foster and Rosario Dawson
💊 Minded Raises $25 Million Seed Round To Reimagine The Future of Psychiatry – Minded, the specialist in prescribing mental health medication online, announces $25 million in seed funding. Investors include Streamlined Ventures, Link Ventures, The Tiger Fund, Unicorn Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, Gaingels, SALT Fund, TheFund, and the founders of Care.com, Bolt, Gravity Blanket, RXBAR, and Gilt.com, along with venture debt from WTI.
☘️ KOS Secures $12 Million Investment to Proliferate the Brand's Plant-Based Mission – KOS, the plant-based powerhouse and functional nutrition brand, closed its milestone $12 million Series A investment led by industry vets and entrepreneurs, Clayton Christopher and Brian Goldberg, with a follow-on investment from early-stage investor, Springdale Ventures.
🧠 BRAINLUXURY Raises $8.1M In Seed Funding – BRAINLUXURY, a company offering a new category of neuroscience-backed nutritional brain supplements, closed a $8.1 million financing round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm True Ventures. This round also included capital from M13 and angel investors with a strong track record in biotech and life sciences.
👩❤️👨 Lovewick, An App to Help Couples Stay in Love Beyond the Match, Raises $1M Pre-seed – Lovewick, a new app that helps couples stay in love once they’ve found it, has raised $1m in pre-seed funding led by Corazon Capital, a fund managed by former Match Group, Tinder, and OkCupid executives, and joined by other notable investors including Leadout Capital and Gaingels.
🇸🇬 MindFi gets $2M seed to create localised mental wellness programs for APAC markets – The Singapore-based company announced it has closed an oversubscribed $2 million seed round, with participation from returning investors M Venture Partners and Global Founders Capital. Angel investors included Carousell co-founder Marcus Tan, Carro executive Kenji Narushima and Spin co-founder Derrick Ko.
🇺🇸 NourishedRx raises $6 million in seed funding to accelerate growth of the first intelligent food-for-health platform – NourishedRx, a digital health company founded with the support of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, has raised $6 million in seed funding. S2G Ventures led the round with additional investors Route 66 Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Primetime Partners, and other individual investors.
👩💼 Equip raises big – Equip has raised $58m in a Series B in support of its mission to transform eating disorder treatment and the cultural conversation around body image.
🍄 Fluence Raises $3 Million to Scale Psychedelic Therapy Training – Fluence, an educational platform that specializes in training and certification for psychedelic therapy and psychedelic integration therapy, completed a $3 million seed funding round. Lead investors in the first close included JLS Fund, Palo Santo, and Neo Kuma, with LearnStart, Evolve Ventures and Foundation, Iter Investments, Baroda Ventures, Matthew Emerman, Michael Cotton, and Noah Levy completing the raise.
🙍♂️ Male fertility startup ExSeed Health secures further seed funding – £2.5M investment round led by the Ascension Life Fund, with participation from Trifork, Hambro Perks, and R42 Group to fund ExSeed’s expansion.
🎧 Spoke launches music therapy app for Gen Z, raises $1.5M round led by Ada Ventures – Spoke is a new app that generates music with what it dubs “mindfulness benefits”. The app is based on 18 months of R&D with modern musical artists and scientific advisors (a clinical trial is planned) and combines music with the mindfulness prompts aimed largely at a Gen Z, or under 25 age group, who are often put off by more “middle-aged” mindfulness apps and movements. It’s now secured a £1.1 million pre-seed investment led by UK-based Ada Ventures, and featuring a number of high-profile UK Angel investors.
👩🦳 HerMD raises $10M to expand women’s sexual health, menopause services – The company currently operates two centers, one in Cincinnati and the other in Crescent Springs, Kentucky. The Series A funding round led by JAZZ Venture Partners will allow the company to open new locations as well as offering virtual care.
🚗 HearHere raises $3.2M to scale its immersive storytelling road-trip app – Santa Barbara-based HearHere, the company behind an audio entertainment and immersive storytelling road-trip app, has raised $3.2 million in seed funding led by RV and outdoor retailer Camping World. The app aims to foster deep connections and understandings of the places and histories of the land that users are traveling through when on a road trip. The company’s seed round included a strategic investment from AAA and participation from Pasadena Angels, SeraphGroup and others. The seed round follows HearHere’s $1.6 million investment announced last year, which also included investments from Camping World, AAA and more.
👱♂️ Men’s Health & Wellness Startup Bold Care Secures Funding To Expand Overseas – Sharrp Ventures, NB Ventures, Huddle, Anthill Ventures, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs and Shiprocket, among others participated in the round. From servicing 100 customers in July 2020, the start-up now has more than 25,000 monthly users as of January 2022
Some tweets
The legend that is Marcelo Bielsa has parted company with Leeds United, so that’s it for me and football... for a few days at least. Luckily, there’s lots of good rugby on the TV to distract me from the loss of El Loco. I spent much of the past 24 hours getting excited about the Six Nations, before realising it’s another fallow week 🤦♂️
Yours in sports,
Ed
—
Ed Rhys
Founder / Skin In The Game
www.skininthegamegroup.com
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