Welcome Back!
This marks the 8th week of the year and by Friday, April 27th we’ll already have hosted 5 runs in 3 cities. I’m no maths expert but I believe that makes us 100% incredible at what we do…which is ball! 🏀 🔥
And in an effort to get to 110% awesome, we’re looking to add a regular monthly run in Sydney on the first Wednesday of each month at 8am…just waiting on our lawyers to cross the Is and dot the Ts, which may sound odd but this is our lawyer:
Speaking of lawyers, check out the spotlight on Sydney Baller Ryan Zahrai in our spotlight below. He’s using robots to sue people…or something like that!
As mentioned, we’re off to a fast start and have these runs coming up ASAP…links embedded and more details below on each run:
GOLDCOAST 🏀 FEB 26 0800 @ Carrara Stadium
SYD RUN 🏀 FEB 27 0800 @ KGV
BRISBANE 🏀 MAR 10 0815 @ QUT
In better news, we’ve been awarded a small “scholarship” from Blackbird Ventures to host the next basketball tournament the week of Sunrise. We’re scouting venues now for either Wed April 29 or Fri May 1st but our previous location (Syd Uni) is all booked up on both dates so let us know if you have an in on a court location in Sydney…esp one near Darlington (Sunrise location).
Once we have a location set, we’ll start the process of engaging with sponsors for the jerseys, food/drinks, and court costs. Hit us up if you’re keen to sponsor like these wonderful partners did last year, our team is always looking for subs and new starters! 🙂 Z
As always, below is what you’ll find in this newsletter.
Info on our upcoming Events + Hoop Runs
SportsTech and Ecosystem Updates
Community Wins + Movement
See you on the court 🏀 🌱
❤🔥🔈COMMUNITY SHOUTS 🔈❤🔥
PARACHUTE SPOTLIGHT 🪂 ⚖
After building Zed Law, our baller Ryan Zahrai along with his epic team have just raised an oversubscribed 1.8M pre-seed with Parachute, a lean legal leverage engine for SMEs.
Rampersand led the round, with coinvestment by Co Ventures and Aussie Angels.
ZABIDOU → STARTMATE 🥳 🤖
OG baller Cibby Pulikkaseril continues to tinker and innovate with hardware, and this time he returns full circle to the force that is Startmate, joining the Summer ‘26 Accelerator with Zabido, enhanced robotic vision with tactile sensing, through laser eyes built for manufacturing - wild that we can do this right now and even wilder that we have a baller like Cibby cooking it up in the hardware world.
SUPERSTAT → STARTMATE 🥳 🏀
Baller Kai Bloomfield + his cofounders Sam and Cordelia have also been accepted into Startmate’s Summer ‘26 Accelerator to continue building elite basketball insight for players and clubs, through their AI enabled sports tracking platform.
ASCENDA → STARTMATE 🥳 🏀
Gold Coast baller Nathan Challen also joins Startmate’s Summer ‘26 Accelerator! We’re going to need to let them enter a Startmate Summer 2026 team in the next tourney! Ascenda helps psychologists support patients between sessions with professional grade AI.
→ ascenda.one
POKER SHOUTOUT
Not all sports are played on a court! Startup Poker came to Sydney in Jan and will be launching in Brisbane in March!
Find Z on LinkedIn to join a future poker event…we promise it will be a flop but we’ll make it up on the river???? Or something punny here. Wait, is that a note for my editor or a dad joke? Or both. If you’ve read this far, ask Z for a $2 off coupon for you next run. We love Easter Eggs and you just found one.
🦄 SPORTSTECH NEWS 🦄
NBA Launchpad 5th Cohort
NBA’s internal accelerator has announced their next cohort of five.
Below is a brief summary:
Atlas
A wearable that measures cognitive “readiness” for peak mental performance.
CRED
Predictive intelligence for sponsorship lead generation
Diddo
API for rights holders and publishers to integrate ecommerce natively within media platforms.
Peripheral Labs
A spatial intelligence platform that uses autonomous vehicle tech to reconstruct live sports into interactive and programmable 3D environments.
Swish Basket
An AI platform connecting real world courts to a digital ecosystem of performance analytics through a gamified application.
Strava IPO 2026?
Strava has not so confidentially filed for an IPO [founded 2009, 2.2B val, last round in May led by Sequioa Capital], fuelling the appetite for more IPOs with anticipated rate cuts, and returns from delayed listings like Brazillian fintech PicPay who scraped their IPO plans in 2021 amid weak market conditions.
Juventus FC launches startup program Juventus Forward
More entities like NBA Launchpad and AO Startups continue to form in localised operations as well. Italian football club Juventus FC is the latest to join the ranks, with their innovation programme Juventus Forward, working with CDP Venture Capital and The Players Fund as strategic partners to collaborate with startups and instituitions. Check out the article below to view all the latest sports technology and startups that Juventus will be jamming with.
75M Series B to scale prediction markets for sports
NYC based startup Novig has plans to further scale its peer to peer betting marketplace, supported by crypto players like Pantera Capital at a valuation of 500M - only 6 months after its 18M Series A.
Novig’s platform has gained traction as the “stock exchange” for sport wagers, seeking to expand to more US states, and potentially integrate crypto settlement for efficient transactions.
Deloitte’s 2006 Global Sports Industry Outlook
Quick bytes:
Global PE deals in the sports industry have risen from 93 in 2023 to 192 in 2025.
Multi-club ownership groups are increasingly pursuing US franchises and sport assets, to combine sports, media rights, content studios, video games, fan data, real estate and more into one data pool for elevated fan experiences.
AI agents are demanded everywhere, E2E from ticketing, analysis, content and logistics.
A substack find for the sportstech nerds
For anyone interested to read more content intersecting sports and tech like our above section, check out Dean’s Substack → Regen Sports.
Below is an insight from a recent article.
Real estate is becoming the primary investment thesis for sports ownership, not the team itself. The team drives the real estate value, and the real estate can generate billions with year round entertainment, from fan experiences to corporate events, esports and concerts.
⛹♂️ EVENTS ⛹♀️
‼ Add [email protected] as a contact to recieve invites.
← PAST RUNS ←
SYD 🏀 FEB 19 0700 @ Hoops Capital
Quality footage here from Chris Calixto [PlayLokal]
Highlight Feature of Louis G [Glory League] playing gentle with Dinal Perera [Humanta]
We also invited Noah Casaclang [Morgan Stanley] to join us -
He runs “hoopafterwork” - a rich growing community of pickup runs orchestrated on Whatsapp.
→ UPCOMING →
GOLDCOAST 🏀 FEB 26 0800 @ Carrara Stadium
SYD 🏀 FEB 27 0800 @ KGV
BRISBANE 🏀 MAR 10 0815 @ QUT
