1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How big is Courtside Ventures?

Deepen Parikh: Our first fund is $35 million. We were scrambling non-stop. It was just me and my partner. Our job is to find the best entrepreneurs, companies, and ideas across our main verticals. As a first-time fund, it was about building relationships with other VCs, sports leagues, and founders.

At the end of the day, we are a vertically-focused fund. A lot is encompassed under the entertainment, media, and sports umbrella. We had to educate the market a little bit in terms of what we were doing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some of the investments that you’ve made. In particular, talk about what stage and how did you find them. What was it about them that really captured your attention?

What I’m getting to get to is how you look at deals. What is interesting? What excites you? What is the lens with which you look at these ventures?

Deepen Parikh: It’s dependent on the stage. In fund one, we were heavily focused on seed and Series A. There are some funds that only want to invest in repeat founders, some in new founders, and some on founders that have a certain background.

For us, it was about finding people who weren’t necessarily in sports but had an interest in the sports and entertainment ecosystem. You’re going to build something for this audience if you have a genuine personal passion and interest around it. That was really important for us.

To give you an example, we’re investors in The Athletic. They’re one of the fastest-growing, digital subscription content platforms for the sports industry. They’ve done a tremendous job over the last three years in building and hiring some of the top writers around the entire US. They have a subscription model for the consumers. They’ve done really well, and they’ve grown quite a bit.

The way in which we first met them is a great story of understanding how relationships develop in the VC industry. We had first spoken to them about seven months before we invested. When we first spoke to them, they were just kicking off the company and the idea. We started diving, slowly but surely, behind what was motivating them to build this and what were their unique skill sets.

The interesting part of what they were doing and their background was, unlike a lot of folks in the sports industry, they didn’t come purely with the mindset of having a traditional media or sports background. They were actually very focused on product.

The founder of that company was previously one of the heads of product at Strava, which is a huge platform for cyclists and other endurance sports. He understood how to build the product for a rabid community. That’s what attracted us to him and his co-founder. They had come from that world of building communities.

We spent time with them pretty regularly over the course of the next six months. They got accepted into YC about five months after we met them. We stayed in touch throughout YC and invested towards the end of that period. Throughout that, we had a really good sense and understanding of how they operate as a team, how they were going to scale, and how they execute.

Sometimes as investors, we don’t have the luxury of time. Things move a lot faster in the deals. That was an example of a company and two really remarkable founders who laid out what they were going to do for us and really executed. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures
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