Investing in the AI brain of professional sports teams.
Team Tech that runs the franchise. Fan Tech that grows it. Twenty-five years building infrastructure and companies, now focused on one thesis: backing the founders building the operating system of the modern sports business.
From an Olympic startline to the sidelines of sports tech.
I finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials in rowing the single scull, then spent more than two decades building the infrastructure serious operators run on by founding five companies and having dozens of patents. My first global start up was one of the first cloud hosting companies that merged with our competitor and sold to QTS for $350 million, my second company out of MIT was an RFID pioneer that won the Department of Commerce's Innovation Award and completed more than 500 global projects including the biggest contracts in the industry before being bought, plus a live-event social platform built to serve clients like Vail Resorts, Formula 1 and the London Olympics. Today I bring that same operator's eye to venture investing, full time, in one lane: sports technology.
5x Founder · 60+ Investments · Creator of the BOODA Doctrine · Wall Street Journal Best-Selling Author of Fear Is Fuel and The Founder's Creed
Investing in Team Tech & Fan Tech
BOA Ventures backs the intelligence layer of the modern sports franchise — Team Tech that runs scouting, performance, and front-office operations, and Fan Tech that grows revenue and engagement. If you're building in this lane, the first step is a BOODA Doctrine workshop to pressure-test the company and the team.
// Managing General Partner, BOA Ventures // Creator of the BOODA Doctrine // 60+ Startup Investments incl. Y Combinator, Flexport & ShipBob // US National War College Fellow // 13 Patents from RFID to Liquid Cooling
Two-Time TEDx Speaker
Also rated the top speaker at Google Talks Europe 2017, on the neuroscience of fear and building fearless teams.
YPO Sports & Entertainment Network
Chair Emeritus of the YPO Sports & Entertainment Network, connecting owners, executives, and operators across professional sports.
League-Wide Network
Advisory ties spanning ownership groups and executives across the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, MLS, NBL Australia, and the Premier League.
Recent Writing
Why I Wrote Fear Is Fuel
In 2004, I nearly died on an operating table at Johns Hopkins. The docs gave me two weeks. What I didn't expect was what came next...
Read more >Google Has Produced More Unicorn Founders Than Anyone. That's the Wrong Number to Look At.
Google has produced 218 unicorn founders, OpenAI just 21 — but that's not the number that predicts anything...
Read more >Want to Live Longer? Play Beer League.
Fifteen years of Monday night beer league hockey turned out to be some of the best longevity training available...
Read more >My Books
I've written and published five books — Fear Is Fuel, the #5 Wall Street Journal Best Seller, published by Rowman & Littlefield; two RFID books published by John Wiley & Sons; Paddy Picks a Puppy, a children's book about learning different personalities; and The Founder's Creed, my latest, on the BOODA Doctrine.
Building Team Tech or Fan Tech?
If you're building the technology running professional sports — on the field or in the stands — let's talk.