Roger Ehrenberg: From Wall Street to Early-Stage VC and Sports Tech Investing

From Wall Street to Venture Capital

• 💡 Roger Ehrenberg transitioned from a 17-year career on Wall Street, running multi-billion dollar trading desks, due to corporate politics and a desire for more entrepreneurial pursuits.
• 🚀 He began angel investing in technology as a side project, seeding 40 companies and discovering a passion for working with builders before product-market fit.
• 🔑 Roger developed a thesis around big data and, despite initial struggles as an ex-Wall Street guy in New York tech, brute-forced the first close of IA Ventures in 2010.

Early-Stage Investment Philosophy

• 🎯 IA Ventures focused on pre-product market fit investing, often writing the first check before a line of code was written, grounded in deep research and intuition.
• 📈 Roger's strategy involved metering in dollars to help founders run early experiments and reach a point for a true seed round.
• 🧠 He believes in having a deeply held thesis on a market, but ultimately, success comes down to the founder's execution.

Building Successful Ventures

• ✅ IA Ventures achieved remarkable success, with Fund One returning 9.5x net of fees and Fund Two returning 14.2x net DPI, placing them in the top 0.1% of VCs.
• 🚀 Notable early investments included The Trade Desk (seeded before co-founder or code) and Datadog, demonstrating his ability to identify future category leaders.
• 📊 Roger's portfolio construction typically sees about 10-15% of companies generating venture-scale returns, with a third being zeros and another third returning capital.

New Horizons: Sports, Media, Entertainment

• ⚡ Roger transitioned from IA Ventures, handing over the firm to his partners, to launch Eberg Capital, focusing on sports, media, entertainment, and the creator economy.
• 🤝 He now invests alongside his sons, leveraging their generational insights and network, especially for consumer-facing products and understanding the modern fan.
• 🏟️ Eberg Capital's activities include franchise investments (e.g., Miami Marlins, Alpine Formula 1) and seeding 29 venture-side companies in the new domain.

Insights on Founders and Future Trends

• 💡 Great founders possess an **