Next Legacy Perspectives

Meet Next Legacy Partners. While many members of both the Next Play and Legacy Venture communities are aware by now, the start of 2023 has been an eventful one for both firms. Having joined forces, Next Legacy now stands poised to deliver lasting impact and superior returns to our partners.   Next Play Founder Ryan Nece and Legacy Founder Russ Hall join a conversation with Next Legacy Venture Part...

Next Legacy is no stranger to serving the needs of athletes, but when Oren Gabriel and Next Play Capital Founder Ryan Nece, now Managing Partner at Next Legacy, first discussed the challenge facing athletes as they transition beyond the world of sports, both of them saw an opportunity.    NextPlayU is the product of that brainstorm. Oren and his talented co-founders have been building a platform t...

While immigration is a polarizing topic in the US, Welcome Tech and their vision to become the digital Ellis Island somehow manage to rise above the politics. Amir Hemmat, Welcome Tech's founder, explains that if you think of a country like a company, attracting the best talent and then creating ideal conditions for their success is a no brainer. This is Welcome Tech's mission.   With millions of...

Harry and his teammates at Mill do not look like your typical early stage startup. For one, they come with a pedigree from some of the most iconic tech companies ever, names like Apple, Google, and Nest. He and Mill Co-Founder Matt Rogers have been in the trenches together, most notably building Nest from $0 to more than $1B in annual revenue, culminating in their acquisition by Google.   Startups...

Most venture-funded startup founders begin their journeys with grand ambitions from the outset. Such was not the case with Natalie, who started Babylist in 2011 to improve upon her own experience setting up a baby registry while expecting her first child. Now almost a dozen years later, she has both a tween and a company who are maturing rapidly.    From those humble beginnings Natalie turned her...

Chase Griffin is a quarterback at UCLA and perhaps the most pioneering NIL athlete in college sports. Despite having not yet regularly started at QB for UCLA, Chase has more brand partnerships than many of the best known names in the college game.    Whether you love the new world of college sports where athletes can monetize their Name, Image, and Likeness or you think this new dynamic has ruined...

Matt Pohslon has spent the last decade innovating on what it means to serve non-profits. Omaze, a for-profit company that raises money for great causes by offering once-in-a-lifetime experiences, has a mission grounded in going beyond raising awareness to making huge impacts (and raising lots of money) for the causes it supports.   Matt and Omaze are well on their way, but it hasn't been a straigh...

Wes started FPV with co-founder Pegah Ebrahimi with one goal in mind: to back truly exceptional founders who are attacking a problem "they've been thinking about their whole life." Wes knows what a successful founder looks like. His track record as an investor at both Felicis and Google Ventures (now GV) speaks for itself. On top of that, his experience leading product teams at Google, including A...

Andrew Brandt knows the business side of sports about as well as anyone. He followed up a career as an agent by joining the Packers in 1999 to negotiate player contracts and manage the cap. He is now a blogger, ESPN expert, professor and leader of the Moorad Center for sports law at Villanova, and podcaster. He was an insider for some of the most definitive moments of the modern NFL, including the...

Many incredible people in this world recognize a need and conceptualize founding a company, but very few bring their ideas to life. After noticing the impact that Breast Cancer Awareness has in only one month of the year, Jake Kloberdanz set out to create something that gives back every single day. He and seven other cause-minded entrepreneurs founded ONEHOPE in 2007 with the mission to "share win...

Colleen Cutcliffe, co-founder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics, is leading the charge on helping humanity live better, healthier, and longer lives. She does this through her study of the microbiome – what other scientists and doctors now know drives nearly every avenue of our bodies (think: cognition, aging, metabolism,  Alzheimer's and Parkinson's). By creating a product that has the efficacy of...

Jonathan Harris has had a bit of the Midas touch when it comes to hardware technology businesses. Major roles at GoPro, Roku, and Jawbone prior to Molekule all made it apparent that Jonathan knew the industry and knew what a winner looked like. Yet, he is quick to acknowledge that Molekule represents a lot of firsts for him. Jonathan spoke of his past companies, an iconic trio, as "nice to haves."...

Hannah Gordon did not grow up in a football obsessed family - her grandad once asked her why people always found linemen to be so "offensive." Despite the lack of early grooming, Hannah has become one of the top power brokers in the NFL as the Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel of the San Francisco 49ers.    Hannah's conversation with Ryan Nece covers many hot NFL topics such as dive...

Aydin was an unlikely candidate to build one of the fastest growing venture funds of the last decade. Almost entirely a product person at iconic companies like Google, Aydin has parlayed a $4M angel investing start into a platform that just raised an impressive $900M fund. His conversation with Next Play Partner Hunter Hillenmeyer takes a deep dive into their path to success.    He names empathy f...

Ross Tucker's childhood dream was to write for Sports Illustrated. When he got the chance to do just that after a successful career in the NFL, Ross earned the chance to be very purposeful about his next steps in media. The result is a career that spans podcasting, play by play, radio, and even his own recruiting business. Just don't call it work.   Ross is a rare example of a superfan turned insi...

Founder, investor, and now champion for under-resourced entrepreneurs through Google for Startups. These are a few of the many hats worn by Jewel Burks Solomon. Jewel's conversation with Next Play founder Ryan Nece goes deep on her breadth of experience. This 3x Google employee talks about what she's learned in her several roles at the company, how they have helped her in her subsequent roles, and...

There aren't many 32 year olds in VC with stronger pedigree than Nikhil Basu Trivedi. He moved to Silicon Valley at the age of 13 and worked his way up through the ranks at Insight Partners and Shasta Ventures, where he refined his craft and revealed a knack for finding and winning competitive deals with great founders. This podcast is a must-listen for anyone considering starting their own VC fun...

Next Play has many athletes as members of our unique community. Usually their story adds up. Where and how they grew up makes their path to stardom in football or basketball seem plausible. Such is not the case with Blaine Scully. How does a multi-sport star in California high school sports go on to become one of the United States' most decorated rugby stars ever? And, no, rugby was not one of his...

Greg Sands has his fingerprints all over the Silicon Valley we know today. As the first head of product at Netscape, Greg helped build the foundation of the original internet boom. As a partner at Sutter Hill and now Founder of Costanoa, Greg continues to work with founders to build industry defining platforms.    His conversation with Ryan Nece covers the gamut. What is Greg most excited about fr...

Eric has worked at IVP for over decade. In that time, he has risen to be one of the true alpha generators of this storied VC firm that has a 43.1% IRR over their 39 year history and tens of billions in cumulative assets under management. Eric and Ryan cover a wide range of topics. No softball questions in this one: is tech in another bubble? How does IVP sustain returns even as their fund sizes co...

Morgan has packed a lot into her young career. After spending her "first inning" at Andreessen Horowitz, Morgan went on to join Medium and then help launch Libra at Facebook. This deep dive into the crypto world has now become a fulcrum for a good deal of her investment focus in her role as the newest partner at NƒX Ventures.    Morgan has a unique vantage point on where hype meets real substance...

A must-listen for athletes and founders, this week's podcast delves into the sports and professional career of Angela Ruggiero. SIL is part research organization, part branding agency, and part software company, helping companies and sports properties to better understand their fans. Angela sits at the helm of SIL, a company she created after seeing a gap in the market during her tenure in various...