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Startups & Super Bowls just don’t mix... at least, not yet.
When Super Bowl LVII kicks off in Arizona on Sunday between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, the tech world will be watching—and hopefully not left cringing.
Call it the Super Bowl jinx. Like athletes donning the cover of Sports Illustrated, startups airing spots on the Super Bowl haven’t had a ton of luck.
Last year’s game was dubbed the “Crypto Bowl” when four crypto companies used multi-million dollar spots to peddle offerings. They included, infamously, a Larry David commercial predicting (accurately, it turns out) the demise of FTX. 2000 was known as the year startups took over the Super Bowl. That year, 11 startups spent millions for 30-second spots. The next year, 8 of them had either gone bankrupt or been sold in fire sales.
We know of at least one blockchain developer with a spot during Sunday’s game. An ad for Limit Break, a blockchain-based game developer, will include a QR code for people to download a token to play its newest release.
The hiring market came roaring back in the first month of 2023, an indication that there are plenty of candidates out looking for the next big thing.
Hiring Trends
- Meta Asks Many Managers to Get Back to Making Things or Leave (Bloomberg)
- Even well-funded fintech companies are laying off workers (TechCrunch)
- 4 tips for reaching out to recently laid off candidates (Wellfound)
Most betting ever for a sporting event
Bloomberg dubbed last year’s game the “first Super Bowl of the online betting era” as apps like DraftKings and FanDuel entered the fray. But that was only a “chips ‘n dip appetizer for the decadent banquet of betting about to take place” in Arizona, the publication reported
Legal sportsbooks are projected to take in over $1.1B in bets, a 16% jump from last year. It helps that sports betting became legal in several more states, bringing the total to 33.
#celliconvalley
Philadelphia is known locally as #celliconvalley because of its reputation in the life sciences for pioneering in immuno-oncology, cell and gene therapy. The first FDA-approved gene therapy—for a rare form of retinal blindness—had its roots in local labs. Companies like Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics are commercializing breakthrough gene therapies.
Since 2022, investors have poured over $2.5B into venture and growth rounds for local companies, according to an analysis of Crunchbase data.
Reddit (hearts) NFL
Reddit announced a new set of custom avatars for the Super Bowl, created in partnership with the NFL. Reddit says that it facilitates 411M views in football-related communities every month, including 195M monthly views for r/NFL. The company says that there was a 32% YoY increase in Super Bowl mentions in the app last year.
Just three months after the company introduced its NFT project, four separate Reddit Collectible Avatar collections found themselves on OpenSea’s Top 10 list for 24-hour trading volume, with one collection knocking CryptoPunks out of the top spot.
QBs to VCs
A trio of Kansas City Chiefs, including quarterback Patrick Maholmes, are immersed in startup investing, mostly in health, nutrition and e-sports. They’ve invested in fantasy and "e-sports" platforms, a Utah-based bakery, a California-based recovery enhancement startup, and an indoor rowing machine developer.
Not to be outdone, the GOAT—greatest of all time—Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Tom Brady, is hanging up the pads to pursue... you guessed it... a new career in venture capital investing.
Though Brady may want to grab his lucky hand towel: He appeared in those non-infamous FTX Super Bowl ads.
It’s probably not just the company’s financial backers who are rooting for the company.
Trending in Tech
Developing digital athletes & influencers
Emerging technologies continue to thin the line between the real and digital world for sports fans worldwide through the use of improved analytics, sports gaming, betting software, and even NFTs and the metaverse.
AR and VR are being used to revolutionize training for athletes and digitalize events for fans, while sports-related NFTs are growing in popularity for both leagues and individual athletes. Companies like Frontrunner are ahead of the game, already creating a decentralized market where users can buy shares of sports predictions and trade them.
Whats more, fan engagement has taken on new levels of authenticity. Now, we can see our favorite players giving house tours on YouTube and dancing all across TikTok. With the advancement of the "athlete influencer", companies like BlinkFire Analytics are keeping up by tracking and analyzing multi-dimensional media outlets; gauging engagement for teams, players, and entire leagues as they look to connect with fans on a deeper level than ever before.
Fitness boom
Tech startups are creating new ways to access fitness technology and programs, often from the comfort of people’s homes, driving the industry's growth. The fitness industry is projected to grow to $400B+ by 2028.
FightCamp is a boxing gym that gives users access to world class trainers and equipment from the comfort of their own home. Last Summer, the training system raised $90M in funding rounds, with some of that funding coming from people like Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather. Area Scouts is a athlete development program that helps youth athletes learn the skills they need to succeed in achieving greatness, living a healthy life, and avoiding injury.
Boston-based WHOOP is a performance optimization system for elite athletes and teams that helps trainers and players find the balance between pushing themselves as hard as they can and pushing themselves too far.
What We're Reading
- How Reddit’s Collectible Avatars Blew Up the NFT Space (NFT Now)
- A Tech Race Begins as Microsoft Adds A.I. to Its Search Engine (New York Times)
- ChatGPT’s creator made a free tool for detecting AI-generated text (The Verge)
- Big oil stirs up a battle over leading the clean tech arms race (Axios)
- Newly empowered Republicans are coming for Big Tech, alleging collusion (Washington Post)
Companies in the news
- Farmersville, California-based The Ugly Company, a producer of upcycled dried fruit snacks, raised a $9M Series A led by Sun Valley Packing and Value Creation Strategies with participation from celebrity Justin Timberlake to expand nationwide.
- San Francisco-based Therma, a cooling intelligence platform, raised a $19M Series A led by Zero Infinity Partners with participation from Collaborative Fund and others to use AI and IoT sensor to reduce energy usage, prevent food waste, and reduce carbon emissions.
- San Francisco-based MindsDB, an open source applied machine learning platform with OpenAI integration, raised a $16.5M Series A led by Benchmark to enable developers to create AI-centered applications for living and working.
- New Zealand-based Fabrum, a developer of zero-emission transition technologies, raised a $23M Series A funding led by AP Ventures to deploy liquid hydrogen solutions across heavy transport, mining and aviation markets.
- France-based Avicenna.AI, a medical imaging AI company, raised $10M in funding led by Innovacom and CEMAG Invest to use deep learning to identify, detect and quantify life-threatening pathologies from CT medical images.
Startups hiring now
- Kunai: Digital product agency | 15 open roles
- Ethyca: Open-Source Developer Tools for Data Privacy | 3 open roles
- Golden: Decentralized Knowledge Graph | 2 open roles