social-sports
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Park Padel
Park Padel is a San Francisco-based padel club operator building Northern California's home for the fast-growing racket sport. Founded in 2023 by Jessica Talbert, Neil Chainani, and Katie Lampert after they discovered padel while traveling in Europe, the company runs three clubs - outdoor courts with Bay views at Embarcadero Plaza, a flagship indoor facility at Oyster Point in South San Francisco, and a location in West Sacramento. Park Padel blends court reservations, coaching, leagues, and social events with an app-first booking experience and a community-first approach, aiming to open 100 courts across the US over the next few years.
Nan Wang
Nan Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Sleeper, the fantasy sports platform built like a group chat that grew to millions of daily users almost entirely by word of mouth. He left a private equity career in Hong Kong to build a sports product that is social at its core, turning a 20-year fantasy league among childhood friends into a company backed by a16z, General Catalyst, and athletes like Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson. Under Wang, Sleeper expanded from fantasy football into the NBA and fantasy esports, drawing an unusually large share of women and casual fans to a category long dominated by ESPN and Yahoo.