Ryan Nece

Beginning with a distinguished NFL career that included a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Ryan Nece started his investment career as a Principal at Arenda Capital and later, Provident Investment Advisors. He co-founded StraightCast Media, a mobile app designed to empower athletes to create their own HD content which sold to FOX Sports in 2014. Having been a professional athlete, successful entrepreneur and disciplined investor over the past two decades, Mr. Nece founded and has served as the Managing Partner of Next Play Capital since 2015, a world-class Silicon Valley-based investment platform at the intersection of consumer, technology and sports. NextPlay Capital has made LP investments into top-tier venture capital firms including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Forerunner Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock, True Ventures, and Union Square, among others. This strategy provides NextPlay Capital unique exposure, access and a powerful community that has enabled NextPlay Capital to also make direct investments into many companies including ByteDance (TikTok), Peloton, Flexport, Hims, Impossible Foods, Hippo, UiPath, PureStorage (IPO), Rubrik, Stemcentrx (acquired by AbbVie) and Walker & Co. (sold to P&G), among others. Mr. Nece is on the Advisory Board of DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU), a member of the Henry Crown Fellow Program and holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.