A year ago, I was handed the keys to a sports car… The role of President of Oregon Sports Angels. There was a great foundation in place built over the previous years and 2024 was the year to press the accelerator. We made our priorities simple and placed our members at the core.
With the commitment of our members, we are finishing up another notable year connecting with founders, evaluating pitches, advising portfolio companies with their growth, and continuing our national expansion. We’ve truly made investing in sports start-ups a team sport.
OSA started the year with a successful transition to new officers and an expanded leadership team. The team focused on continuing to build on what has worked successfully in previous years and incorporated additional elements to promote engagement for our members.
Our members invested in 7 new companies this year and continued with follow on investment into current portfolio companies. Countless hours were shared with founders to advise and support their efforts with fundraising. As investors, our members adapted to the changing conditions and scale up time frame for startups. Our updated list of Portfolio Companies shows the range of sports tech and sports product companies.
Kate Delhagen, OSA Founder, and Hans George developed Founders Connect, a program to build a network of our portfolio company founders to share their experiences and insights. It’s the ultimate peer learning experience for our founders.
The OSA team grew to include new members in the Great Lakes area as well as in the Rockies. We’ve had a few members who relocated to continue their careers contributing to the membership in the Midwest. We now have members in all time zones across the continental US and the new members are contributing additional expertise in the venture investment field.
We continue to build our OSA community with pitch days, socials, member education sessions, founders connection events, and the occasional pickleball game that seems to take on a slightly competitive nature. If the idea of investing and helping founders build the next generation of sports companies interest you, we are always interested in meeting potential new members. Additional information is available in the JOIN US section.
As a non-profit organization, we are grateful for our professional services partners in Legal and Accounting. Thank you to White Summers for their legal advice and Perkins & Co for their support in accounting services.
None of this is possible without the efforts of our leadership team and officers:
Sandy Pressley – Vice President
Doug Klucevek – Treasurer
Jinky Panganiban – Secretary
Caleb Ginsberg – Investment Committee
Milessa Muchmore Lowrie and Mark Hochgesang – Membership Committee
Nancy Monsarrat – Marketing
Maddy Veith – Digital Platforms and Marketing
As we head into 2025, we are pressing the accelerator and starting a transformative year with deeper engagement for our members and founders. Thank you all for a great year.
All my best,
Jim Chi