Ryan Mundy — Opportunity in Mental Wellness and Raising VC to Build a Category-Defining Business

Human beings have been collecting non-utilitarian items for millennia. It just so happens that with the advent of the digital age, we're now able to collect items from around the world and display them digitally for fellow collectors all over the world to admire as well. Add to this Digital Collectibles, like NFTs, and you've got a space ripe for tech innovation.

If you listen to this show regularly, you know that the shifting interest of athletes from endorsement to ownership is something we talk about a lot. Well, it turns out that in the last few years, athletes aren’t the only ones that are thinking about how to get ownership in the brands, companies and financial institutions they help build as early adopters, micro-influencers, or simply as customers.

In many ways, Bennie Fowler's story is the epitome of resilience and exactly the kind of journey we love sharing onThe Game Plan every week. Bennie had tremendous success in college at Michigan State and like many of his fellow players, expected to hear his name called during the NFL Draft. Unfortunately, that announcement never came.

Podcasting and social audio as a viable business has seen explosive growth in the past decade, the last few years especially. With Spotify having spent over $1Bn to acquire both tech and talent, apps like Clubhouse raising at multi-billion valuations, and even platforms like Twitter launching their own social audio Spaces, we felt this topic deserved a deeper dive.

In this week's episode of The Game Plan, we venture into the wild, wild west of the internet: Digital collectibles, NFTs and Web3. What does it mean for athletes, how is it changing how athletes think about their personal brands and ability to monetize their work on and off the field, and who the key stakeholders in this new tokenized world are and will be.