Today, I’m joined by Deepen Parikh, a partner at Courtside Ventures. 

 

Courtside is an early-stage venture firm focused on fitness and wellness, sports and media, and gaming. 

 

In this episode, Deepen tells us about Courtside’s new $75M fund, the firm’s thesis as it related to fitness: including the reinvented gym, human performance, community, and personalized data. And we get into how he thinks about the team, business model, and market when evaluating an investment opportunity. 

 

A quick announcement that we touch on this in the episode: Anthony & I are excited to be partnering with Courtside — where we’ll be working as advisors to the firm. So if you’re building a company in health, fitness, wellness, or sports categories, we’d love to hear from you. Send us an email: [email protected]

 

More from Deepen

Deepen Parikh is a Partner at Courtside Ventures, a leading VC fund focused on early-stage companies across sports/digital media, fitness/wellness and gaming. Since launching Courtside Ventures in 2016, they've invested in 45+ companies, including Freeletics, Future.fit, Gainful, Silofit, Paceline, The Athletic, StockX, The Drone Racing League, Religion of Sports, Beam (acq by Microsoft), 100 Thieves, RecoverX, among several others.

  He leads the funds investment focus across fitness, and wellness along with select investment in sports and digital media.    Sitting at the intersection of the rapidly growing entrepreneurial ecosystem and the broader sports technology industry, he was recognized as a 2018 Sports Business Journal Forty Under 40 recipient.  

Previously, Deepen was a Partner at Interplay Ventures, an early-stage technology incubator and investor, where he was part of launching/building 15+ companies and investing in another 6 companies.

 

Deepen started his career as an Associate at UBS Financial Services and earned his BA in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He currently resides in New York City with his wife, Rakhi (who works at Major League Soccer) and his daughter Prem.

 

More on Courtside 

  Courtside Ventures is a leading early-stage VC fund, backed by several professional sports team owners, public media companies, global family offices and strategic individuals and athletes. They focus on investing across sports/digital media, fitness/wellness and gaming.    Across Fund I and Fund II (which they are in the process of closing), they've invested in 45+ companies, including The Athletic, StockX, The Drone Racing League, Religion of Sports, Beam (acq by Microsoft), Rebel (acq by Salesforce), Freeletics, 100 Thieves, Players Lounge, RecoverX, Future.fit, Gainful, Silofit, Paceline, among several others. 

 

More from Fitt Insider 

 

Fitt Insider is a weekly newsletter and podcast about the business of fitness and wellness. 

 

From product launches and funding news to game-changing innovation, Fitt Insider provides listeners with insights and analysis on this ever-evolving industry. 

 

Join your peers and colleagues from companies like Equinox, Apple, Peloton, Goldman Sachs, Nike, and ClassPass by subscribing.  

Website:  http://insider.fitt.co