From soccer cleats to term sheets… Dick’s Sporting Goods just joined the big leagues of a new sport: venture capital. Yesterday the retailer launched a $50M VC fund called DSG Ventures. Dick’s plans to use the in-house fund to invest in new sports products and tech.
Everyone’s a (venture) capitalist… An old-school sporting-goods chain might seem like an unlikely source of VC funding, but corporate venture capital (aka: CVC) has a long history. Chemical giant DuPont became the first big CVC when it invested in fledgling automaker General Motors in 1917.
VC can act as discounted R&D… Instead of spending big to develop new products and tech, corporations can invest in smaller companies that’ve already created them. That could yield financial benefits like IPO returns and strategic wins like product partnerships. General Mills’ VC arm helped launch Beyond Meat, and Google Ventures backed GitLab, Slack, DocuSign, and Toast. Dick’s hopes to do the same with sporting goods, but it’ll be up against Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour — all of which have VC divisions.