Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures Launching $25M Startup Fund

Updated on

Is this the top? It looks like NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana now has two successful careers. Moreover, he has already been almost as successful in his second career as a venture capitalist as he was as a four-time SuperBowl winning quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers.

Or as Credit Suisse put it in an email to clients this morning:

 

Credit Suisse – For those curious if we’re near the top for tech startups:

Football legend Joe Montana is raising a $25 million venture capital fund

http://www.businessinsider.com/joe-montana-is-raising-a-25-million-fund-for-startup-investing-2015-12

Montana is now launching a fund with his venture capital firm Liquid 2 Ventures, according to an SEC filing. The filing also noted that Joe Montana was serving as Liquid 2’s managing partner, and that it will be a $25 million fund, but no further details were provided. Of note, when Business Insider interviewed Montana a few months ago, he mentioned he was almost ready to close on a $25 million VC fund focused on startups.

Keep in mind that Montana has been an early-stage tech investor for some time now. He has had investments in firms including Dropbox, CoreOS, and Pinterest. Both Montana and fellow NFL vet Lawyer Milloy took an ownership stake in the sports app company GameOn as a part of its $1.5 million seed round.

Joe Montana launching new “opportunistic” VC fund

“Joe Cool” spoke to Business Insider at Y Combinator’s Demo Day earlier this year, and said that he was finalizing a new startup investment fund.

At the time, Montana said that Liquid 2 Ventures was intended to be an “opportunistic” fund, and would not have a specific area of focus at first.

Montana also explained in the BI interview that it was SV Angel founder Ron Conway who was his main inspiration to launch a fund. Montana also indicated it was possible that Conway would be an adviser to the new fund.

“I ended up catching up with Ron Conway a number of years ago and I’ve kind of been following him around, picking his brain and the SV Angel guys’ brains,” Montana commented. “He got me into YC a number of years ago, and one day he asked: why don’t you just start a fund?”

Leave a Comment