Steve Nash Gets Assist on Marketing Company
Written by playerpress.com, Tuesday August 10 2010
Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns point guard known for doling out assists, will get another with the start of Consigliere, a marketing consultancy firm in New York City.
According to Advertising Age, Nash and Michael Duda of Deutsch, a widely respected agency executive, are responsible for starting the firm, which has a $20 million investment fund and aims to take stakes in start-up companies. Consigliere wants entrepreneurs to consider marketing not as an afterthought, but as a strategic part of the growth process. It will focus on investing in budding firms in only a few sectors, such as e-commerce, sports and durables.
Among its backers are New York-based venture capital fund Zig Capital, Interpublic Group of Cos.' Deutsch and its chairman, and sometime TV personality Donny Deutsch, according to an article in today’s Advertising Age.
Duda and Nash became friends in 2007 after the NBA star and his marketing agent, Bill Sanders of BDA Sports, came to Deutsch's New York office with a special two-week marketing project. Nash took to visiting the agency regularly, sitting in on creative department meetings and probing staffers with questions about the ad business. His interest grew to the point that in 2008 the two-time NBA MVP took a three-month unpaid internship at Deutsch's Manhattan office, even dabbling in creative work for clients, including an interactive project for Anheuser-Busch.
While the idea behind Consigliere was Duda's, Nash knows about sketching out business plans and raising funds, thanks to a healthy realization that, after 14 years in the NBA, he needs to build a life after basketball.
"I realize I'm not going to play basketball forever," Nash, who spoke to Ad Age on two occasions about his involvement in Consigliere, said. "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."
Nash already owns Meathawk, a film-production company that produced creative projects for Vitamin Water and Nike and is working on a documentary about Pele, one of the greats of Nash's second-favorite sport, soccer. He also owns a chain of gyms, a vitamin company and a social-media company, Apoko, which aims to help celebrities and athletes better connect with their fans on Facebook or Twitter.
Nash said he is committed to spending time on Consigliere. Asked how much time he can realistically devote to the venture in between games and in the off-season, he said, "I'm going to spend hours on it every week -- I don't know if that's three or 20, but some weeks it will be a full-time job."
Consigliere is betting on a trend in the VC world that has seen little guys get a leg up on the big ones. By some estimates, less than a quarter of all funds raised last year were less than $100 million, and lowered technology costs are making it easier for start-ups to get off the ground. Given the size of Consigliere's fund, it won't invest in every company it consults with and won't buy start-ups outright, but will take minority and, in some cases, majority stakes in the firms.
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