After his seventh NFL season in 2014, Chicago Bears safety Ryan Mundy knew he was entering the “twilight” of his career. Though only 29 and fresh off his best year, he was cognizant of the sport’s finite longevity.
“When the music stops,” he asked himself, “what am I going to do next?”
Mundy enrolled in the University of Miami’s executive MBA program to take courses part-time, a hybrid of classroom work and online learning. A back injury kept him sidelined for the 2015 season, and after arduous rehab all winter, he decided to retire after a career spent playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants as well.
Around that time, retired Lakers star Kobe Bryant had launched his $100 million venture fund, and a number of athletes were diving into the investment space. One of Mundy’s friends from his native Pittsburgh suggested he look into angel investing. With his MBA completed — to go along with an undergraduate degree from Michigan and a previous master’s degree in sports management from West Virginia — Mundy cold-called and emailed dozens of professionals for what he calls his “fact-finding journey” that culminated in his March launch of Techlete Ventures.
“At Techlete Ventures, it’s just me,” Mundy said. “I am the GP, the LP, the associate, the analyst. I do it all, soup to nuts — I search my own deals, evaluate my own deals.”
One of the best pieces of advice he received came from Laurence (Lo) Toney, a partner at Google Ventures, who advised Mundy to evaluate at least 200 deals before making his first financial commitment. Not wanting to be just someone who wrote a check, Mundy is taking a methodical approach. He said he has a few pending term sheets out for review now but isn’t quite ready to announce his first deal.
“I worked really hard for my money, and I used to have to run into people to get it,” he said. “So I had to be very mindful about where I was writing checks.”
Mundy has spoken on panels such as June’s Hashtag Sports tech and media conference in New York, although sports technology is just one area of interest. He prefers to be “sector agnostic” when scouting deals and so far has been most interested in the fields of enterprise software, financial technologies (including cryptocurrencies), health care and consumer packaged goods. He’s also considering buying stakes in small-to-medium sized businesses as well as classic angel investments in startups.
“When you reduce your opportunity set, it magnifies the difficulty to actually achieve a winner,” Mundy said. “There’s a duality to that. Yes, I have domain expertise [in sports]. I could bring value to these sports companies. But then on the flip side, I’m more than just an athlete.”
That’s the ethos that has helped prepare him for his post-football life. As he wrote in a recent essay about head injuries, football players are always just one injury away from an abrupt end to a career that only averages 3.3 years anyway; he played eight years and retired as a 31-year-old. The national conversation about concussions began around the time Mundy joined the NFL, but he said he doesn’t recall any meaningful conversations about them or about CTE in any locker room.
“It’s a Debbie Downer, but it’s a very real thing and a real discussion that should be had,” he said. “We can’t operate in silence or think that we are immune.”
That’s why Mundy said he’s volunteering with the Trust, an NFL Players Association engine to help players transition into life after football and find their own answer for what to do next.