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Deepen Parikh shared thisSince we started Courtside Ventures in 2016, we've backed 130 companies across sports, entertainment, and consumer. Through all of it, we've kept the team intentionally lean. A small team means everyone sees every deal end to end, and it means every hire changes the firm. We're now looking to add an Associate who wants real ownership from day one. You'll work closely with each of the partners, while also sourcing deals through your own network, develop theses and turn them into investments, lead diligence, and defend your recommendation at IC. You'll also support founders after we invest and write publicly about your views. There will be a real path to grow here, and as Courtside continues to evolve, you'll have an opportunity to shape what comes next. The people who stand out will have prior VC experience, have sourced a deal that closed or built something of their own, have a presence online, and aren't afraid to have a strong POV. This person should be in NYC or can split time here. If that's you or someone you know, apply through Workable below. https://lnkd.in/eh_Mts9P
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Deepen Parikh shared thisEloelo has always been phenomenal at creating original content at a scale few companies can match. Today they're sharing their edge with the world and opening up early access to Dolphin AI, an agentic studio for end-to-end video production. Eloelo and their various products, including StoryTV App (By Eloelo group), put out 200+ new dramas and 100K+ ad creatives every month, and many of the AI video tools on the market didn't match their needs. They struggled with multi-shot scenes, and characters stopped looking like themselves after 8 or 10 seconds. So the team built their own tool and used it on 45,000 videos before telling anyone outside the company. As high-quality video gets dramatically cheaper and quicker to create, the number of great stories told will grow with it. We believe the India market and Dolphin AI will be key forces behind that next wave. Congrats Saurabh Pandey and the Eloelo team. Really fun watching this all come together. Early access link in the comments if you want to try it out. #GenAI #India #CreatorEconomy
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Deepen Parikh shared thisThe latest edition of Courtside's The 4th Quarter explores the bullish outlook for investors in India's $52 billion sports economy, excluding the IPL. Government initiatives have leveraged public funding to enhance sports infrastructure, with only 21% being privately backed. However, the new National Sports Policy paves the way for increased private sector investment. With a population of 1.4 billion, 65% of Indians are under 35, making India one of the few major economies actively de-aging. The middle class is the fastest-growing income group, expanding at a rate of 6.3% annually, adding 338 million people from 1995 to 2021. Additionally, affluent consumers are expected to rise from 60 million to 100 million by 2027. Other topics covered in this week's newsletter include CVC raising $3.1 billion to fund a Global Sports Group, the PGA Tour's expansion of its Player Equity Program, and the collaboration between OpenAI and Peloton. For weekly insights into the sports and entertainment industries, sign up at https://lnkd.in/eeqGXXKD To read the full newsletter, visit https://lnkd.in/dJpZfQtv.Courtside's The 4th Quarter: Why You Should Be Long On India's $52B Sports EconomyCourtside's The 4th Quarter: Why You Should Be Long On India's $52B Sports Economy
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Deepen Parikh shared thisWhen Courtside Ventures was established in 2016, the prevailing notion in the sports market centered around making returns solely through team ownership. However, our fund emerged with a different perspective, influenced by Vasu's struggles in securing funding from VCs for his first startup, Krossover. Fast forward almost a decade, with over $300M raised, supporting founders across 10+ countries, and various portfolio companies acquired by giants like Microsoft, The New York Times, and Salesforce. Today, as we embark on our new Fund IV, the focus remains clear: while team ownership remains important and grabs most headlines, the game-changers in sports are at the crossroads of technology, entertainment, and media. However, we’ve noticed an unexpected gap in the marketplace — a lack of in-depth analysis connecting the macro forces shaping the business of sports, entertainment and tech. That's why we're excited to announce Courtside’s The 4th Quarter, a media platform delving into this intersection with thoroughness, context, and trustworthiness. Teaming up with the impressive minds behind The 4th Quarter (Sid + Suraj), known for their unique perspectives, we aim to fill a gap in the market for consistent, in-depth analysis of the sports, entertainment, and tech sectors. This collaboration isn’t about competing with existing sports media, who are core to the industry — it’s about complementing them. Our aim is to offer insightful analysis, original content, and practical insights for the founders, operators and investors shaping the industry's future. Courtside's distinct position as one of the first venture funds focused on sports and related sectors, combined with The 4th Quarter’s expertise in sports-business storytelling, enables us to merge industry knowledge with independent editorial excellence and a growing audience base. Together, we will provide: - Weekly summaries dissecting key developments in sports, tech, and entertainment - In-depth features and highlights on founders, operators and execs - Podcasts featuring industry trailblazers - Exclusive events bringing the community together Welcome to Courtside’s The 4th Quarter — your guide to in-depth analysis and trends in sports and entertainment. Check out the latest weekly edition: https://lnkd.in/eH4BnepR Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eeqGXXKD
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Deepen Parikh shared thisWhen Alex Mather was starting to think about his next company after the successful exit of The Athletic to The New York Times, I asked him why he wanted to get back into building again so quickly. His answer was simple: "I don't want my young kids to see me sitting around and not working hard and grinding every single day on something that I care about." The best founders are motivated beyond just the financial reward. Sure, money is important, but it's not the reason they work tirelessly and sacrifice so much - they are built differently. For Alex, it was his own future mortality and his personal fitness that led him down the path to starting his new company, Eternal. We at Courtside Ventures had the privilege of backing The Athletic from their seed round through their exit. It returned our entire first fund and was one of the most formative companies we have been involved in. We're now beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to invest in Alex again with Eternal, where he's bringing together his deep passion for fitness, expertise in creating products that unify experiences, and his deep level of understanding around subscription models. Eternal is a new healthcare service tailored to lifelong athletes. They will keep athletes active, healthy, and performing their best for much longer. For those of you that have participated in the movement around proactive care, you know there is no shortage of tests to try or experts to follow, but it can be very challenging to navigate based on your personal activities, lifestyle, etc. This fragmentation and lack of a centralized/holistic companion for lifelong athletes, is what Eternal aims to solve. Courtside Ventures co-led the $13.25M seed round with the great folks at Lightspeed, Treble Capital and NEXT Ventures, along with participation from Founders Fund, Terrain, JAZZ Venture Partners, Precursor Ventures, Bling Capital and Flare Capital Partners. Eternal is launching later this year, but you can join the waitlist today - https://eternal.co/ You can read more about why Courtside invested here - https://lnkd.in/ep72eXX7 Here is Alex's post announcing Eternal - https://lnkd.in/eZeY9Wue Live Harder, Longer.Eternal | Personalized Health Podcasts from Your Wearables & LabsEternal | Personalized Health Podcasts from Your Wearables & Labs
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Deepen Parikh shared this🔻 It's no secret that venture funds have been deeply impacted by the lack of liquidity in IPO and M&A markets over the past couple of years. 💰 Distributions from VC funds to LPs dropped 84% from 2021 to 2023 per Wellington Management, resulting in a 14-year low in overall distributions. 🇮🇳 Despite the anemic deal activity in the US markets, one market has far surpassed all others and continues to buck the liquidity trend: India. 🤑 Per Axios, India saw private capital-backed exits reach $25B in 2023 and has already surpassed $11.5B in the first half of 2024. Over these past 18 months, India has accounted for the highest share (37%) of overall exit value outside of North America and Europe...even surpassing China. 🏅 Not only has the country seen outsized deal and exit activity, but it has also experienced rapid growth specifically within sports and gaming. 🏏 Of the country's 1.4B people, an estimated 678M (47%) are now considered sports fans per Ormax Sports, roughly double the entire US population, with sports-related Google searches up 50% in the country this year. The Indian sports pandemonium hasn't been limited to just the country's borders. Just a couple of weeks ago, the US hosted the ICC Men's T20 Cricket World Cup, with jaw-dropping attendance numbers of 165k fans across the tournament as India's sports culture is successfully making its way into the US and abroad. 🎮 The Indian gaming ecosystem is also experiencing rampant growth. The country is now the fastest-growing mobile gaming market in the world per Interactive Entertainment, expecting to double in value from $3.1B in 2023 to over $6B by 2028. With over 568 million gamers and (even more noteworthy) 240 million paid gamers, the country is seeing unrivaled demand in various sectors of the gaming landscape. Courtside has long seen India as a market ripe for venture investment, having made 6 investments in the country within the past 4 years. With a rapidly growing population of sports / media / gaming fans, increasing venture deal volume, and an attractive exit market, we couldn't be more bullish on the future of venture in India. Check out the link below to see the full Axios article as well as Courtside's former blog post on India. https://lnkd.in/gKRJ59v4 https://lnkd.in/gWJE5zqK #VC #India #sports #gaming
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Deepen Parikh shared thisWhen we first launched Courtside Ventures in 2016, our goal was to solve the massive dearth of institutional capital across the early-stage sports and gaming industries. The common misnomer at the time was that sports and most of gaming was not "venture scale". Eight years and three funds later, we are excited to share that it is! From an innovation and early-stage investing standpoint, both industries are still in their infancy, and we firmly believe the opportunity globally will lead to several generational companies and outcomes over the next decade. In an effort to peel back the curtain, we decided to launch our first edition of Courtside Ventures By The Numbers. https://lnkd.in/guV2zvRW
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Deepen Parikh shared thisCourtside Ventures recently launched a new careers page. It lists various open roles across our portfolio companies in and outside the US. If you're interested in opportunities in sports, gaming, collectibles, or wellness, check out the page now. https://lnkd.in/gi6Vx8FgJobs at Courtside Ventures Companies | Courtside VenturesJobs at Courtside Ventures Companies | Courtside Ventures
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Deepen Parikh reposted thisDeepen Parikh reposted thisThe AC Momento auction with Sotheby's featuring six shirts worn by Lionel Messi at the 2022 World Cup ends TOMORROW (Thursday) at 12:00pm ET, with the current bid at $6.5 million. See the full collection and register to bid at: www.sothebys.com/messi
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Try Dolphin AI → https://www.trydolphin.ai/
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Deepen Parikh liked thisGreat role with Deepen Parikh and team at Courtside.
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Deepen Parikh liked thisI wanted to share this opportunity from my friend Deepen Parikh and the team at Courtside Ventures. It’s a very unique role for the right person who is passionate about sports and venture capital. Check out the details below.
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Deepen Parikh liked thisDeepen Parikh liked thisAfter an incredible journey, tomorrow will be my last day at Redesign Health. This is a hard post to write because the experience has meant so much more to me than a job. I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside some of the smartest, most ambitious, and most mission-driven people I’ve ever met, and I’ve learned an enormous amount about healthcare, company building, investing, and leadership along the way. I’m especially grateful for the opportunity to help take Redesign Health beyond the U.S. and build our international business in Saudi Arabia with Sanabil Investments. Launching our first international fund, building a team on the ground, and partnering with incredible people across the region has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. I’m also deeply grateful to the founders who trusted me with their ideas, their companies, and some of the most important years of their professional lives. Supporting people who are willing to take enormous risks to build something meaningful is a privilege, and I never took that trust for granted. I learned as much from them as I hope I was able to give in return. I’m leaving with a huge amount of gratitude and pride for what we built together, and I’ll be cheering loudly for the team and the founders continuing to push healthcare forward around the globe. I’m incredibly excited about what’s next. More details to come soon. To everyone who made this chapter so special: thank you.
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Deepen Parikh liked thisDeepen Parikh liked thisI am stressed this week. Stressed with telling the stories of some of the most fascinating companies on the planet, that I’m lucky enough to be entrusted with. What a privilege. I’m overwhelmed this week. Overwhelmed by deadlines from a made-up company that I own and run and dreamed from my own imagination, that now pays me more than my old finance job. What a privilege. I’m struggling to time manage this week. Because I have the cutest toddler on the planet and a husband who is also chasing his dreams as a founder. What a privilege. I am missing my family & friends this week. My parents and sister and cousins who I didn’t see as much as I’d like this summer, but who are all healthy and who love me and are cheering me on. What a privilege. What a privilege. What a privilege.
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Deepen Parikh liked thisDeepen Parikh liked thisWe don't say this often...we are HIRING! Since 2016 we've kept the Courtside team deliberately small while building a portfolio of 130 companies across sports, entertainment and consumer, including The Athletic, StockX and Beam. Adding someone new is a big decision for us, so we're looking for the right person. We're hiring an Associate to work directly with our investment team across the full life of the fund. What you will do: → Sourcing: build your own engine of founders, co-investors and communities → Diligence: lead the research and defend the recommendation at IC → Thesis: pick categories, go deep and turn a point of view into deals → Portfolio: support founders after we invest → Voice: write publicly for the firm, with your name on the thinking We are looking for someone with previous VC experience, uses AI as a core part of their work, and has real conviction about where our categories are headed. It helps even more if you've sourced a deal that got done or built something of your own. This is a position with high autonomy and the ability to see the full lifecycle of fund management. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/eh_Mts9P
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Deepen Parikh reacted on thisDeepen Parikh reacted on thisAfter the best 9.5 years of my professional life, and with a heart bursting with gratitude, I'm spinning out of FJ Labs to start my own firm. There is no place in the world like FJ. Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin helped pioneer super-angel investing, a collaborative, network-driven model that still sounds unfathomable when I describe it. I had the privilege of working on almost 500 investments and raising capital from LPs in 20+ countries. For the rest of my life I'll remember the late-night debates, the thesis-building (and debauchery) at offsites, and working with a group of colleagues who became extremely close friends. Fabrice and Jose - thank you for taking a chance on a junior IR associate and trusting me with your firm. From hunting in Spain to kitesurfing at Fabrice's villa in Turks and Caicos, fundraising from Riyadh to Bangkok, raising a SPAC (oops!), and Halloween in Shanghai: what a ride. Arne H. Halleraker, my Nordic brother from another mother - you were the best partner I could ask for. You bring an engineer's rigor to investing, and taught me so much about management, science, technology and strange Norwegian traditions :) I'm convinced you can go down as an all-time great frontier tech investor. The team is in the best hands possible. Matthew S., the title COO doesn't do you justice. Ariel Lebowits, I hope to never negotiate against you :) William in Guillouard, the funny Frenchman and king of IT. Lauren Lee, Danny Browne and Mehul K., the young guns who keep me honest on AI. Ryan Geary, Owen McCarthy, CPA, Morgan Spar, Gloria Rodriguez- the best ops team in the game. My FJ teammates, both former and current- thank you for everything. I consider you close personal friends and always will. To my founder and investor friends (too many to list here, but you know who you are!!) - while my day-to-day at FJ is ending, I'm staying in the family as a Senior Advisor (think venture partner on steroids), helping with the portfolio, and will work closely with the FJ Labs team on secondary opportunities. As for what's next- if you know me, you know I'm an obsessive distance runner. An ekiden (eh-kee-den) is a long-distance relay race that started in Japan more than a century ago. Each runner carries a sash called the tasuki for one leg, then hands it to the next teammate. As I wrote in Venture's Nifty Fifty Moment, great companies now stay private longer than the funds that backed them were even built to last. Venture has quietly turned into a race with no finish line. I like to say that one of the polite lies of venture capital is the 10-year fund life. Plenty of early investors, employees and LPs have run their leg, and they're still waiting for someone to take the sash. Announcing Ekiden Capital. If you're looking for the next leg in the venture relay race, my inbox is open.
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Deepen Parikh liked thisDeepen Parikh liked thisThis evening, the Rooney family, Pittsburgh Steelers, event chair David Malone and Catholic Youth Association (CYA) hosted the 53rd Annual Art Rooney Awards Dinner and Auction at Acrisure Stadium. Founded by “The Chief,” Arthur J. Rooney, in 1973, the awards recognize the Pittsburgh region’s best and brightest in industry, media, service and sport. Steelers President Art Rooney, II and Vice President of Strategy Dan Rooney presented this year’s awards to a distinguished group of honorees: • Daniel and Carole Kamin, Kamin Family Foundation — Art Rooney Award for Outstanding Service to the Region • Kendra Whitlock Ingram, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust — Patricia R. Rooney Award for Women in Leadership & Service • Jerad Bachar, VisitPITTSBURGH — John E. McGrady Award for Community Building & Philanthropy • Andrew Stockey - WTAE-TV (ABC) Pittsburgh — Bill Burns Award for Excellence in Journalism & Media • Olivia Babcock, University of Pittsburgh Panthers Women’s Volleyball — Bob Prince Award for Achievement & Outreach in Sport • Claudia Popinski — The Nick Cardello Volunteer Award For more than a century, CYA has worked to help young people overcome poverty and neglect. Today, the organization has grown into a premier childcare agency and a leading provider of services for older adults. CYA embodies The Chief’s commitment to giving back and taking care of one another — a commitment that is also reflected in this year’s honorees. We are grateful to the awardees, volunteers and supporters who continue to make a difference in our community and make Pittsburgh a better place. 📝: https://bit.ly/4dHRKAk
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Deepen Parikh liked thisDeepen Parikh liked thisFor me, Harry Stebbings is one of the most defining names in the new wave of venture. I have a ton of respect for how he built 20VC into its own thesis, its own media, and its own way of making decisions. This week I was super excited to join him on 20VC. It's probably the most open conversation we've had about Higgsfield AI so far. How we got to $1B in annualized revenue in 18 months, some investor scars along the way, and the customer who went from a $99 subscription to $6M a year. I got to talk about things we've never shared publicly before. Might be the most interesting part. Coming soon.
Experience & Education
Honors & Awards
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Sports Business Journal - Forty Under 40
Sports Business Journal
They come from nearly every sector of the sports business. They are agents, marketers, entrepreneurs, team owners and presidents, lawyers, athletic directors and more. They are the industry’s best and the brightest, and leaders in their respective organizations, all under the age of 40.
https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Conferences-Events/2018/FUF.aspx
Organizations
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American India Foundation
NYYP Board Member
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