The Los Angeles-based company will be called Bryant Stibel and will be looking for a certain type of start-up or entrepreneur.
“Sometimes you can spot it right away, other times not so much,” Bryant told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s the inner belief that a person has that he will endure no matter what the obstacle may be. It’s that persistence, the entrepreneur doing what he or she truly believes in and truly loves to do.”
Bryant retired after the 2015-16 season, concluding a 20-year NBA career, but he has invested in the past in a variety of companies, including The Players’ Tribune website, online legal-services provider LegalZoom and home-juicing company Juicero.
It’s Bryant’s eye for investments, not his fame, that intrigued Stibel, who began his career in brain research and later founded and developed tech companies.
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“We don’t want to be in the business of investing in companies so someone can use Kobe as an endorser. That’s not interesting,” Stibel said. “The point is to add real value.”
The Journal noted that the “most similar comparison” of Bryant’s new endeavor is to Knicks star Carmelo Anthony’s Melo7 Tech Partners “for largely early-stage tech investing.”
