Iguodala goes from the hardwood to the boardroom
For nearly two decades, Andre Iguodala established a reputation as one of the NBA’s most versatile players, an All-Star and Olympic gold medalist who won four championships with the Golden State Warriors.
Now, Iguodala tells DealBook exclusively that he’s retiring from pro basketball to focus on his second career: start-up investor. He will run Mosaic, a $200 million venture capital fund he raised with his longtime business partner Rudy Kline-Thomas.
Iguodala’s revelation ended years of speculation. The 39-year-old had suggested that last year’s season would be his last kill rumors About it earlier this year. But now it’s time to hang up his sneakers. “It’s been a privilege to play for so long,” he told DealBook. (He hasn’t fully come to grips with it yet: “I don’t know if it’s really hit me yet,” he said.)
He is accepting his next assignment. Although he and Cline-Thomas started buying tech stocks in 2010, both delved deeper into start-ups when they joined the Warriors in 2013. “When I initially moved to the Bay Area, my intentions were to have success on and off the court,” Iguodala said. “I thought about how to gain access.”
This followed meetings with venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and then took stakes in start-ups including Zoom and cybersecurity provider Cloudflare.
This is a model that many professional athletes now follow, From NFL stars Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers to Iguodala’s longtime Warriors teammate Steph Curry. “Athletes are becoming smarter,” Iguodala said, adding that their competitiveness and ability to speak to an audience helps sell products and create scale.
Mosaic is his focus now. The company will work on seed and seed stage investments in enterprise software, fintech healthcare and sports companies. Iguodala and Kline-Thomas closed Mosaic’s first fund — whose investors included endowments, institutions and founders of companies they’ve already backed — in May.
Mosaic’s investments include Vessel, a manufacturer of modular multifamily homes, and NFL talent agency and management firm Athletes First.
Sports franchise ownership is another focus. Iguodala is the co-owner of Leeds United, an English soccer club; Bay Area FC, National Women’s Soccer League team; and, with former teammates Curry and Klay Thompson, the San Francisco branch of TGL, the upstart golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Iguodala’s highest aspiration? Owning an NBA team. “The timing has to be right,” he said, but “that’s definitely the ultimate goal.”
“The disruption to an already difficult business model is real. …It’s a post-social web.
, Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic. Media executives have realized that traffic to their websites from tech giants like Google and Meta’s Facebook is suffering a steep decline, and probably won’t come back.
A new effort for net neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission has revived a plan to restore so-called net neutrality rules, reigniting a fight over how Washington regulates Internet services and whether the Web should be treated as a utility. .
Democrat-led agency votes along party lines, Commissioners voted 3-2 to revive Obama-era rules that bar broadband providers like Comcast, Charter Communications and AT&T from blocking or slowing down competing services like Google and Netflix. The Trump administration rescinded the rules, saying they were an example of regulatory overreach.
Rules allow FCC to treat the Internet like a utility, like water or electricity provider. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the importance of Internet access became clear during the COVID pandemic. He said broadband access has become a necessity for work and education, but the regulator is unable to rein in providers to ensure quality service.
The agency will be able to monitor companies for net-neutrality violations, consumer harms and security lapses. This could include forcing Internet providers to reduce rates that the FCC considers unreasonable.
Republicans and cable companies vowed to fight the move. Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said the rules were counterproductive and improved Internet service for consumers when the rules were not in place.
USTelecom, a cable industry trade group, warned of “mission creep” in cybersecurity by the FCC. Internet providers said they would challenge the policy change, including with lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court.
read speed
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video game publishers sitting $45 billion cash, potentially leading to more consolidation in the industry after Microsoft closed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. (CNBC)
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Josh Kushner-led venture capital firm Thrive Capital is reportedly leading the talks Buy shares of OpenAI At a valuation of over $80 billion. (Information)
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US banking giants have shed 20,000 jobs combined so far this year. (CNBC)
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Investors in the US and Europe have Sold shares worth $5.1 billion Major Chinese tech companies including Alibaba and Tencent fell in the last two months. (Bloomberg)
Policy
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SEC will drop the cases Against two crypto executives over the trading of the digital token XRP. (WSJ)
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mike huckabeeThe former governor of Arkansas is the latest author to sue tech companies, including Meta and Microsoft, for training AI tools on their published works without compensation. (the verge)
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Was there Peter Thiel? confidential fbi informant, (insider)
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