Enterprising individuals Steve Nash, point guard for the Phoenix Suns, and Michael Duda, chief corporate strategy officer at Deutsch, New York, have partnered to launch a new marketing consultancy with an investment fund of roughly $20 million.
Called Consigliere, the new venture capital company plans to focus primarily on the areas of sports, e-commerce and durables, and is backed at least in part by venture capital fund Zig Capital and Deutsch, as well as the latter’s chairman, Donny Deutsch.
Nash and Duda first met in 2007 when Nash spent some time in New York at Deutsch for a marketing project, then in 2008, Nash returned to complete a three-month, unpaid internship there in the Big Apple so as to better learn the ropes of the ad industry.
“I realize I’m not going to play basketball forever,” Nash told Advertising Age’s Rupal Parekh. “But I want to learn, grow, do something creative … I don’t want to be stuck after basketball going, ‘What’s going to give me life now?’ I wanted to give myself options to do the things I love so when I’m done playing, I don’t have to be a coach or a broadcaster.”
And in case you didn’t already know, this isn’t Nash’s first spark of business savvy. The basketball player and sometimes spokesperson is also involved in his own production company, called Meathawk (which has produced shorts for ESPN, Nike, Vitamin Water and others), as well as The Steve Nash Foundation and Steve Nash Sports Club. Oh yeah, and he’s also a part owner of the soon-to-be-established Vancouver Whitecaps FC major league soccer team.
No more specifics yet on who or what Consigliere plans to invest in first, but one thing’s for certain: Nash is just as hard to keep up with in the business world as he is on the court.
News
August 18, 2010Haute 100 Miami Update: Helio Castroneves
