Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is the co-founder of a $50 million venture capital fund that says it will invest in “growing consumer brands.”
Newport Beach, California-based Rx3 Ventures today announced the launch of the fund.
Rodgers co-founded the firm with Nate Raabe and Byron Roth of ROTH Capital Partners. All three are considered general partners of Rx3 Ventures.
ROTH Capital Partners has raised in excess of $57 billion for small-cap public and private companies while also co-founding three asset management firms that collectively manage over $3 billion.
Rodgers is one of several professional athletes, musicians, actors, and entrepreneurs investing in Rx3 Ventures, which in a news release says it “combines partner experience and institutional resources with wide-ranging relationships across the sports, entertainment and business worlds to generate differentiated deal flow and add value to portfolio companies.”
“As professional athletes, we’re constantly approached with investment opportunities,” Rodgers said in the release. “With more and more access to deal flow, it’s hard for any athlete or high-profile individual to adequately evaluate each opportunity. We are in a unique position to help drive positive outcomes for companies, particularly consumer brands, but the relationship needs to be authentic. With Rx3, I saw the opportunity to create an investment platform that brings together a group of like-minded influential investors and their respective networks with the backing of institutional resources.”
“We’ve seen a proliferation of athlete and celebrity investments, particularly in private consumer companies,” Roth said in the news release. “As more and more of this capital enters the market, sophistication becomes more important. To find the best opportunities, we’ve put together a team that combines insight, experience, and influence with the institutional resources of ROTH Capital. All of us believe in the power of the platform we’ve assembled and our three general partners represent a substantial portion of the fund’s commitments.”
“We have established a powerful network of influential investors across sports, media and business,” Raabe said in the release. “Though it is still early, we are already seeing our value-add approach make an impact on our portfolio companies. We are excited for the opportunity to align ourselves with growing brands and provide support beyond capital.”
