1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Beam is also a subscription business model?

Deepen Parikh: It wasn’t; it was ad-supported. It was very early. It’s different from The Athletic, which was more of subscription model and more consistent revenue where you can see the growth over time. This was a pure-play on technology interactivity, but more importantly, it’s just massive validation from the small community.

I would much rather take a smaller cohort of people that are using the product so rabidly versus a much larger cohort of users who are using it sparsely. It gives you a sense of understanding of how a user operates and what really appeals to them.

We ended up investing in that company. Eight months later, they got acquired by Microsoft. Those are the kinds of stories that are not common. It speaks to our mindset. It’s all about the people. If we’re seeing someone developing something that is really unique, we’re not scared to move really fast.

If it’s something where we need to know the founders more and build a relationship, we’re also happy to take our time. Part of our job is determining how quick we can move and how much comfort can we gain in a short period of time versus having to learn more and develop more relationships.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch to trends. Within the sports tech space, what are the trends? What are the trends in the different sports and geographies? Walk us through what’s happening.

Deepen Parikh: Speaking directly about the digital media and content consumption side, something that we’re constantly trying to think about is, how is a young individual watching sports content? We’re past the phase where a 13-year-old is going to sit there for three hours and watch a game.

We’re constantly working with the media companies trying to determine how someone from a younger demographic interacts with sports content. Part of it could be just 30-second highlights. It could be Instagram. It could be a new platform we’ve never heard of.

These are all things that really appeal to us. It’s even further nuanced when you look at the way folks consume sports content in other countries like India and China. In India, for instance, it’s very heavy on mobile.

When it comes to cricket, it’s still quite a bit linear. Trying to determine where that audience separates and the different features that people are watching are something we think about non-stop.

Sramana Mitra: Cricket is a game that people are willing to spend quite a bit of time watching, right? When I was growing up, I watched a lot of cricket.

Deepen Parikh: Less frequency. If you have 161 games a year in Major League Baseball, it’s hard to assume that a younger audience is going to watch all of that. It’s the same thing with cricket.

There’s still quite a number of matches but instead of just watching only on your TV for the entire match, you might partially watch on your TV. You might watch part of it on your phone. That’s something that is proliferating heavily.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures
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