Tagged: soccer
8 results
New Balance
New Balance is a privately held, family-owned athletic footwear and apparel company founded in Boston in 1906. Originally a maker of arch supports and orthopedic shoes, it grew into one of the world's largest sportswear brands, known for its running shoes, the iconic 990 and 574 sneakers, its unusual commitment to domestic manufacturing in the US and UK, and a strategy of being 'the best, not the biggest.' The company reported roughly $9.2 billion in 2025 sales and competes globally with Nike, Adidas and others across running, lifestyle, basketball, tennis, baseball and soccer.
OTTO SPORT AI
OTTO SPORT AI is a Minneapolis-based startup building an AI-powered operating system for youth sports. Founded by veterans of SportsEngine, TeamSnap, NCSA, and FloSports and led by CEO Luke Zaientz, it consolidates fragmented tools for club management, league and tournament operations, ticketing, and athlete recruitment into one platform. Its flagship AI product, OTTO PILOT, answers parent and athlete questions from an organization's own knowledge base to cut administrative workload. The company launched publicly in January 2026 with $16.5M in seed funding and three strategic acquisitions.
David Lokshin
David Lokshin is the co-founder and CEO of Trace, an AI sports video company that places an autonomous camera on the sideline of youth games and hands each player a personalized highlight reel. He started the company in 2011 as AlpineReplay, a side project with his father Anatole, building GPS sensors that tracked skiers and snowboarders, then pivoted the same data-and-camera engine into team sports. A Harvard applied-math graduate who began his career trading FX options at Barclays, Lokshin describes Trace as 'the creator and keeper of memories.' The company has raised roughly $71.8M through a Series C and employs around 130 people from its Austin base.
Annie Case
Annie Case is a Partner (and current Advisor) at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms, where she backs early-stage founders building in consumer tech, digital health, and enterprise AI. A Stanford-educated defender who won the 2011 NCAA soccer championship, she traded cleats for cap tables after stints at Bain & Company and Uber — where she helped scale UberEats internationally — and has since built a portfolio spanning mental health (Modern Health), AI healthcare infrastructure (Ambience), fitness coaching (Future), and next-generation shopping (Phia). Known for investing at the intersection of human behavior and technology, Case brings rare operator empathy to the boardroom.
Dean Meyer
Dean Meyer is a Partner at Sequoia Capital based in Tel Aviv, leading the firm's Israel operations. A former professional soccer player for AFC Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv, he pivoted from competitive sport to venture capital after studying computer science at Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). He joined Sequoia in March 2024 - shortly after October 7 - to double down on Israel's tech ecosystem at its most turbulent moment, backing technical founders in infrastructure, cloud, data, AI, and cybersecurity. His portfolio includes Decart (now valued at $3.1B), Eon, Irregular, and Kela.
Max Blacker
Max Blacker is an Investment Analyst at LDV Capital, a venture firm focused on visual technology and computer vision. A former professional soccer player who played for Crewe United FC in Belfast's Northern Irish 4th Division, he turned a leave of absence from Brandeis University into a founding moment - launching SETGK, a goalkeeper glove company that became one of the fastest-growing brands in the space. He holds a BA in Business from Brandeis and an MS in Finance from Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business, where he also kicked field goals for the football team and was a Global Finalist in the 2024 Venture Capital Investment Competition. At LDV Capital, he focuses on the intersection of visual technology with sports, health, and nutrition.
Kara Nortman
Kara Nortman is a Princeton and Stanford MBA-educated venture capitalist who spent eight years at Upfront Ventures before pivoting to become the defining force in women's sports investment. She co-founded Angel City FC — the NWSL team that became the world's most valuable women's sports franchise at $250 million — and then launched Monarch Collective, the world's largest women's sports investment fund at $250 million. She was also in the room at IAC's Hatch Labs when a restaurant-reservation app called Cardify was reborn as Tinder.
Pejman Nozad
Pejman Nozad is the Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC, a $800M+ AUM seed-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2013. Born in Tehran, he arrived in Silicon Valley in 1992 with $700 and no English, worked as a car washer, lived in a yogurt shop attic, then became the top Persian rug salesman on University Avenue in Palo Alto — selling $8M in a single year to the Valley's most powerful VCs and founders. Those relationships became deal flow. He backed Dropbox, DoorDash ($1.9M seed → $440M), AppLovin, and Andy Rubin's pre-Android company Danger. Forbes ranked him #1 on its Midas Seed List three consecutive years (2023, 2024, 2025). He has no CS degree, no MBA, and never worked in tech — yet built one of the highest-performing seed funds ever and joined the board of Sheffield United FC in 2025.