David Beckham co-founded a supplement brand 19 months ago. This week it closed $1 billion in growth financing from General Catalyst, with no ownership diluted.

General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund will finance up to 70% of IM8's marketing spend. In return, GC takes a capped share of income from the customer cohorts it funds. Once GC earns back its capital plus the cap on a given cohort, every dollar those customers generate afterward belongs to IM8 permanently.

CEO Danny Yeung says every dollar IM8 has spent acquiring customers has already returned $1.44 in gross profit, and that figure climbs monthly.

IM8’s recent growth numbers: $17M in revenue in June 2026, its best month ever. $200M+ in annualized run-rate revenue within 19 months of launch, projected to hit $300M by the end of the year. 50 million servings delivered, roughly 200,000 per day, an order every 27 seconds.

IM8's partners also include Giannis Antetokounmpo, Aryna Sabalenka, F1's Ollie Bearman, and Inter Miami CF, the club Beckham co-owns.

Beckham is 51 and hasn't played professionally in over a decade. He co-founded this company, owns a piece of it, and just structured $1 billion in growth capital to protect his stake and those of the elite athletes invested.

Mookie Betts, 4x World Series champ and 6x Gold Glove winner, just launched his own baseball glove company.

The brand is LGND: two glove lines, Japanese kip leather, sold direct at LGNDSports.com with a build-your-own customization platform.

The standard playbook for an elite defender is a signature deal with Rawlings or Wilson; lend your name, collect a royalty, and the brand keeps the customer, the margin, and the IP. Betts owns the product, the D2C channel, and the customer data.

His 3 co-founders go back to high school in Nashville: Cameron Lewis, who has built Betts' personal brand for years, Brandon McPhail, COO at Betts' The 5050 Foundation, and Andrew Montgomery, a practicing attorney handling legal and commercial strategy.

A brand builder, an operator, and a lawyer who have known him for 20 years. Small, trusted team with real functional coverage, not a licensing agency.

Betts is 8-time All-Star with more defensive credibility than any glove marketer on earth. He's converting that credibility into equity while he's still playing.

Ok, it may be a few weeks late, but I am here to let you know that I attended Next Legacy's 2026 Bridge Summit in SF. In a word, it was sweet. Here's another "SF is back!" that's mainly directed at all my teammates throughout my career who told me California sucks. I digress. Here's what was so crazy about the summit. The lineup: LL Cool J, The Chainsmokers, Investors at Accel, Sequoia, a16z, and Larry Fitzgerald. How did that all fit together? I'm here to tell you with a few of my insights and takeaways. Let's start at the beginning.

I don't know about you, but the best way to start my morning is always a PowerPoint presentation. Thankfully, I got that with a presentation on angel investing from John Melas-Kyriazi. In all seriousness, it was potentially the best description of the dos and don'ts of angel investing that I have ever seen.

The room was composed of current and former Next Legacy Fellowship members. The presentation was about an hour long and highly detailed on best practices, portfolio construction, and deal sourcing. Here's what John did best with his presentation. He made it palatable but not condescending. It was tailored to the athlete investor. If you've been paying attention before, you know that I value the intersection of athletes and startup investing. That intersection is not the easiest to delineate. Look at me. I am still writing and trying to figure it out. John had it dialed.

He spoke as if he had years of experience as a pro athlete angel investor. He leaned into key specifics of how athletes should think about adding value. Promotion, fundraising introductions, and product insights were all highlighted. He also pointed out that athletes may have more of a leg up in consumer health, CPG, and fitness brands. The biggest takeaway, one that I have the scars from, was the importance of establishing your process early and understanding that angel investing is not VC. A pro athlete likely does not have the time, resources, or subject matter expertise to source and diligence a company like a VC. The key that John emphasized was not being afraid to lean on your network for sourcing, diligence, and other investing insights.

I learned this the hard way. A company came to me through a carefully sourced, highly reputable channel. I looked at it and decided I did not have the time to run full diligence myself, so I passed. I wanted to play VC. I should have trusted the network that put the deal in front of me. That company went from a 50 million dollar valuation to 10 billion. Be open to leaning on and learning from others. It will only make you better in the end.

Which takes me to the next part of the day. The Bridge Summit. An entire day of fireside chats and presentations.I want to focus on the two most important aspects to me. The content and the room. In terms of content, it should be no surprise that AI was the marquee topic. A large portion of the conversations offered a glimpse into a fairly unrecognizable future dominated by the progression of AI. All of the content was fascinating, but the room is what offered the unique juxtaposition. My earlier question asked how it all fit together. Do pro athletes and tech go together? Do the military and actors? How about singers and founders?

In a traditional sense, maybe not. But in my experience, that cultivates the best learning environments. I have found conversations about football with non-football fans to be more challenging and engaging. The outsider is often not bound by the same set of assumptions or experiences as the die-hard football fan. There is a certain willingness to ask the unique question that a traditional fan might believe is odd or beneath them. Those exchanges are what defined the Bridge Summit environment. The rooms you enter shape what you learn and who you become. I will always bet on diversity of thought and diverse rooms in an uncertain future.

Reveka makes magnesium-infused bar soap. Veteran and woman owned, made in the USA, and built on 10 years of R&D by founders Darlene and Dan.

Reveka uses medical-grade magnesium chloride from the Zechstein Seabed, a 250-million-year-old formation known as a premium, unpolluted source of natural magnesium chloride.

For athletes, topical magnesium is linked to reduced muscle soreness, lactic acid clearance after intense training, deeper sleep through GABA receptor function, and testosterone support. Recovery products usually mean foam rollers, ice baths, and supplements. Reveka puts it in the shower, a routine athletes already have twice a day.