Former New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston and his business partner Nick Edwards are looking to raise $100 million for an athlete-focused venture fund. Champion Venture Partners (CVP) is designed to help athletes making the transition from jock to entrepreneur.
The fund doubling as an investment management company aims to create more accessibility to deal flow pipelines for not only former athletes, but also retail investors and other underrepresented groups that typically don’t have opportunities to invest and receive support for their business ideas.
“We’re trying to create access points to where everyone has an opportunity to build wealth and we’re focusing on that intersection of sports and business,” Colston said in an interview. “A lot of people have made money off your back as an athlete. Can we open some doors to where you can participate in the economy that you’ve created?”
The soon-to-be launched fund carries a nontraditional model incubated internally as a portfolio company of nonprofit VC firm BisonX. Colston and Edwards, a former mixed martial artist, plan to leverage the infrastructure and resources of the North Dakota-based VC fund to find and grow later stage sports-related businesses. Fund investors will benefit from the growth of portfolio companies like CVP, according to Colston, without having to wait nearly a decade before realizing returns. It’s more akin to an internal fund at a private equity firm, he says.
Colston, who played 10 seasons for the Saints before retiring in 2016, recognizes the fundraising landscape has been harsh for venture capital recently. The athlete entrepreneur hopes the lower “risk profile” model will provide more liquidity and opportunity since the investment profile is atypical.
Colston and Edwards look to reach their target goal in the next three years while deploying capital at the same time. The former Super Bowl champion, who sees his new platform as an opportunity for interested venture capitalists to diversify their portfolio, wants to specifically zero in on sectors across sports tech, data, media and entertainment companies.
This is the latest venture for Colston, a long-time advocate of retired athletes. As the CEO of Marques Colston Enterprises in the years since his last season in 2015, he has been a growth consultant and investor of startups companies in the sports tech and wellness space.
“I’ve always seen the education gap when it comes to athletes and venture capital,” Colston said in an interview. “You get tired of the mascot roles coming up over and over … There’s been a lack of access. It’s about how as a collective can we take this opportunity as athletes to educate and share deals with each other?”