Wayne Kimmel, managing partner at Conshohocken's SeventySix Capital, is always seeking new entrepreneurs to back.
His sports-focused venture capital firm looks at about 150 business plans each month, but the firm is also constantly sifting through social media and attending conferences to meet entrepreneurs who could be a good fit, Kimmel said during the Philadelphia Business Journal's "Connecting with Venture Capitalists" event on Thursday.
Kimmel and retired NFL player James Develin, a member of the firm's Athlete Venture Group, discussed their investments with SeventySix Capital and their search for the next big thing in sports tech, esports and sports betting.
“We’re out here,” Kimmel said. “We want to talk to entrepreneurs who are thinking about this.”
One of the firm’s recent investments was in NFT Pro, a white label platform for brands to develop and sell non-fungible tokens, which are virtual objects like art or music that can't be replicated and are traded on a blockchain. When it came to investing in NFT Pro, Kimmel was impressed with CEO Christian Ferri's experience as a serial entrepreneur and blockchain expert.
“Those are the kinds of people who we like to invest in,” Kimmel said. “Those are the kinds of people we want to get behind. Entrepreneurs who are incredibly passionate about what they're doing and have that incredible desire and drive.”
Kimmel compared NFT Pro’s services to those that Philadelphia-area billionaire entrepreneur Michael Rubin once offered through GSI Commerce, which provided e-commerce, multichannel and online marketing services to clients like the NFL, RadioShack and Polo Ralph Lauren.
“We help them, soup to nuts, just like Michael did back in the day, where he was like, 'Oh, Mr. Lauren, you don't need to do this e-commerce stuff. Just send it over to me. I got it,'” Kimmel said of Rubin, who sold GSI Commerce to eBay for $2.4 billion in 2011. “And that's what he did. And that's how he built that business. And that’s one of the reasons we’re so excited about it from the NFT perspective.”
Kimmel sees opportunity in the ventures that bring together the sectors that SeventySix invests in. There’s overlap in esports, sports betting and sports tech, particularly as it relates to the demographics that play and bet, he said. Companies like sports betting operator DraftKings think about how to get younger customers involved through their media arms, esports and more, he said.
It’s less about offering bets on esports games like "Overwatch" or "League of Legends," and more about capturing the demographics that enjoy traditional sports alongside esports, Kimmel said.
“It's about the actual human beings that are playing those games,” he said. “And to us, esports is like any other sport. It's a competitive game, and some of them are really good at competing in a game, just like someone who’s really good at playing the game of football.”
Kimmel is confident that the momentum around esports, sports betting and sports tech will continue.
New Jersey sports betting brought in $1 billion in wagers in September — a landmark haul for the state, which legalized the practice in 2018. Philadelphia's Nerd Street Gamers, one of SeventySix Capital’s portfolio companies, grew from a small startup in a warehouse on North 3rd Street into a national esports venue operator and tournament host.
Two of the firm's other portfolio companies, broadcast and content startup VSiN and sportsbook operator Vigtory, were acquired in March by DraftKings and FuboTV, respectively.
“This industry is moving fast, and it’s so exciting to see what's happening,” Kimmel said.
