Sapphire Sport is an enterprise VC firm investing at the growth stage, with a focus on startups disrupting sports entertainment and culture. The firm has attracted significant funding from a diverse group of investors and has committed $300 million to fuel startups in the fitness and sports entertainment sectors.

Sapphire Ventures

We invest in early-stage technology companies powering the next generation of consumers. The digital age is rapidly accelerating how brands foster passionate communities—that’s why we work with founders and visionaries across sports, media, gaming, fintech, health and human performance who want to build a more connected world and ultimately, shape the lifestyles of tomorrow’s consumers. 

Our Backers:

We bring together investors with long histories of building and monetizing loyal and passionate communities. Our LPs offer the capital and industry-defining experience of premier global sporting, media and lifestyle brands, including City Football Group, owners of English Premier League champions Manchester City; owners and investors from major U.S. sports franchises—NFL, MLB, NBA, WNBA, NHL, and MLS—as well as strategic entertainment organizations, family offices and institutional investors.

Our Family Approach:

We believe in building communities because that’s who we are too: a family of partners, investors, and founders who energize and empower one another in an effort to push us all forward. We can be counted on for an authentic partnership that’s made to last. As part of this, our Portfolio Growth team supports our portfolio through customer, partner, and talent introductions from our deep bench of industry contacts. Portfolio Growth is made up of experienced global operators who deliver value-add services through meaningful business introductions and distinct Centers of Excellence, which provide guidance and best practices to our portfolio companies.

MyCujoo

Sapphire Sport

Amazing news from Overtime today, Series D funding! 🔥 A huge congratulations to Dan Porter, Zachary Weiner, Farzeen Ghorashy, and the whole Overtime team on this incredibly monumental step forward in your journey. 🚀

As Sapphire Sport Partner Michael Spirito puts it in the following Forbes article, the big picture is Overtime recognizes the importance of GenZ consumers, "...Overtime is proving that's a generation that has a voice. It's a generation that has wallet share and a generation that wants to be included."

Excited to see what's next for Overtime! 🏀 💪

https://lnkd.in/grRhNreM

CC: We're thrilled to welcome several new partners, including Liberty Media in this latest round.

#venturecapital #VC #SeriesD #Overtime

Congratulations to Trust CEO James Borow and the entire team on the $30 million boost to help scale their growth network for emerging brands! 🎉✨🎉
 
We're thrilled to support Trust on its mission to provide curated news, real-time performance data, and community insights to help its network better invest in its growth.
 
Sapphire Sport's Partner Chloe Steinberg put it best - “With a powerhouse team hailing from Snap, Trust is applying a unique understanding of consumer social to an enterprise fintech product – creating a social network for high-growth companies who know exactly why they’re there – to grow smarter and faster, together.”
 
Learn more about this exciting milestone for Trust ⬇️⬇️⬇️: https://lnkd.in/eFc4jdFG
 
#VC #venturecapital #sapphiresport #sapphirefunded #highgrowthcompanies

For VCs, the NFT gold rush is *on*. Sapphire Sport’s Rico Mallozzi chats with Venture Capital Journal's Emilia David about the state of the NFT market: https://lnkd.in/eVyYF8rZ

#NFT #NFTmarketplace #venturecaptial #VC

Congratulations to Patricio Worthalter and the entire team at POAP - Bookmarks of your life on your $10M raise! #sapphiresport #sapphirefunded 🎉💥👏

We’re so thrilled to fund POAP and its mission to create an ecosystem for the reliable preservation of individuals’ memories and identity with their primitive NFT protocol. 

Learn more about why we’re thrilled to back POAP and claim your own POAP today to signify this exciting moment! https://lnkd.in/eDP3SakT

#NFT #digitalbadge #Web3 #metaverse #funding #VC #venturecapital #sapphiresport #sapphirefunded

OpenLP

Sapphire is global software venture capital firm with $11B+ in AUM and team members across Austin, London, New York, Menlo Park and San Francisco. For more than two decades, Sapphire has partnered with visionary teams and venture funds to help scale companies of consequence. Since its founding, Sapphire has invested in more than 170 companies globally resulting in more than 30 Public Listings and 45 acquisitions. The firm’s investment strategies — Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport — are focused on scaling companies and venture funds, elevating them to become category leaders. Sapphire’s Portfolio Growth team of experienced operators delivers a strategic blend of value-add services, tools and resources designed to support portfolio company leaders as they scale. To learn more about Sapphire, visit: https://sapphireventures.com.

Segment

Nutanix

Alteryx

One97 Communications

Integral Ad Science

DocuSign

Fastly

Block, Inc.

Sumo Logic

Currencycloud

Wise

Auth0

AvidXchange

JFrog

LinkedIn

Looker

Fitbit

Five9

monday.com

MuleSoft

For today's startups, maintaining a strong growth trajectory while ensuring financial health is a balancing act. ⚖ 

Join us next week at Startup Grind Global where Sapphire Ventures’ Rajeev Dham will moderate a panel discussion on “doing both:” navigating revenue and venture funding, alongside Sangeeta Chakraborty, CRO at Miro, and Michael McBride, General Partner at GV (Google Ventures) and former CRO at GitLab. 

The panel will discuss a range of topics, including transitioning to durable growth, enhancing customer experiences as a cornerstone of successful brand development, understanding the most valuable metrics reshaping how success is measured in the startup ecosystem, and much more.

📅 Wednesday, April 24th at 9:20 AM PT 
📍 Fox Theatre: Redwood City, CA 
🎟️ Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/gVAiSd4 

#StartupGrind #VentureCapital #StartupSuccess

Investing in a partner strategy can significantly influence your company's trajectory. 🤝 

Last week marked the launch of our Partner Maestro Workshop Series spearheaded by Sapphire Ventures' Business Development Partner Laura Padilla and Uday Keshavdas, Snowflake’s former Head of Programs and SIs and Xapa's current Chief Operating Officer and Board Member, to share best practices for building a successful partner framework. 

The emphasis was on creating sales and services channel partner models, including key success factors to supercharge your partner strategy like:

🔹Define clear partner objectives
🔹Know your market and competition
🔹Allocate resources wisely
🔹Set measurable success metrics

Stay tuned for our next workshop, where we will delve deeper into these topics and share additional tips for success. If you’re interested in joining, email lpadilla@sapphireventures.com. ✉ 

Thank you to this group for joining us! 

#GTM #PartnershipStrategy

The climate tech ecosystem is experiencing significant growth, driven by a rapid decrease in renewable energy costs, substantial green subsidies, and recent climate disclosure requirements.

In our latest blog, Sapphire Ventures’ Imogen M. and Sam Procter dive deep into these market trends shaping the climate tech industry, key opportunities for 2024, and four areas where the potential for impact and innovation is particularly promising:

1️⃣ Battery-Adjacent Software
2️⃣ Smart Grid Technology and Distributed Energy Resources
3️⃣ Adaptation Tech
4️⃣ Innovations in Supply Chain

Each of these categories represents a critical component of the broader push toward decarbonization. 

Read the blog below to learn more and discover the startups we believe are leading the charge toward a more sustainable future.

Read the blog: https://lnkd.in/gdDZQaGt

#ClimateTech #B2BSoftware

Join us at With Intelligence’s Pension Bridge The Annual 2024 next Tuesday for a panel discussion that will take a close look at the relationship between AI, investing, and risk management. 

Sapphire Ventures Partner Cathy Gao will share her VC perspective on where AI can truly make a difference, the precautions necessary to mitigate its risks, and cutting-edge strategies shaping the future of investment alongside fellow allocators and managers: 

🔹Tracy Fong, Partner, Head of Private Markets at Albourne (Moderator)
🔹Emma Norchet, Director, Teachers' Venture Growth at Ontario Teachers'​ Pension Plan
🔹Abhishek Rane, FRM, Associate Director of Strategy & Risk Management at Ascension Investment Management, LLC
🔹Zhang Zhang, Investment Analytics & Data Science Director at Polen Capital

🎟️ Learn more about the conference and RSVP: https://lnkd.in/eBfmBnEq 

CC: With Intelligence - Pension Bridge

#PBAnnual24 #VentureCapital

Many companies are eager to leverage AI technologies to enhance their products and productivity. But how do you design for success and what tangible results can you expect? 🤔

Join us for our upcoming AI event, hosted in collaboration with HSBC, to learn from product leaders, CIOs, and technical experts across two panels:

🎤 AI, Product, & Engineering: Learn best practices for embedding AI and productionalizing generative models from:

- Kinshuk Mishra, CTO & Head of Engineering Cedar
​- Jitender Aswani, VP of Engineering StarTree
- Junaid Saiyed, CTO Alation
- David Carter, VP, Eng Excellence Sapphire Ventures (Moderator)

🎤 AI, CIO, & IT Leadership: Learn about adopting AI, the process for selecting and prioritizing use cases, building a team, measuring ROI, and more from:

- Bhawna Singh, CTO Okta
- Bryan Wise, CIO 6sense
- Laura Padilla, Partner, Head of BD Sapphire Ventures (Moderator)

Following the panels, we invite you to join us for our networking and cocktail session to share insights and connect with peers and speakers.

🎟️ Interested in attending? RSVP soon, space is limited: https://lu.ma/AIpractice

#AI #GenAI #BusinessStrategy

VC:SAPPHIRESPORT

Sapphire Ventures

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