New York, NY – December 25, 2013 – Madison Square Garden: Amar’e Stoudemire (1) of the New York Knicks during a regular season game
(Photo by Ben Solomon / ESPN Images)
NEW YORK — Amar’e Stoudemire looks comfortable as the keynote speaker at Deloitte’s Israel Dealmakers Summit. He laughs easily when asked about a touchy subject like the future of the New York Knicks. He’s able to speak with entrepreneurs and investors from Israel and the U.S. about everything from investing to basketball. He helps snap selfies in the elevator on his way out of Rockefeller Center.
And if there are startups out there looking for partnerships with Stoudemire and his network of friends, he is all ears.
After 14 years in the NBA, the six-time All-Star Stoudemire played this past season for Hapoel Jerusalem — a team he had partially owned — and it has opened up his world even more to tech investing as Israel is a sports technology hotbed. He said he has done speaking engagements and attended seminars there. In April, he hosted a food and bar crawl in Jerusalem in conjunction with Forbes’ Under 30 Summit for entrepreneurs and walked down the streets wearing Snapchat Spectacles.
Stoudemire was active with startups in his lengthy business portfolio during his time in the NBA, and now he’s looking more at tech investing.
“I’m very active in the tech space,” Stoudemire told SportTechie on Wednesday. “I’ve been meeting so many people and talking (about) so many innovative ideas that I’ve been dealing with and speaking with, and I’m starting to learn more. I’d like to study a little bit more before I get involved, but right now I’m studying different companies that I’m interested in. And once I gain more knowledge and understand it, then I’ll be able to invest or even bring some sweat equity to the situation.”
Stoudemire said he felt if he put in the work, then there would be more of a sense of urgency to see to it that a company finds success. Of course, not every one of them does, and he would know. Stoudemire participated in a $2.25 million seed funding round for e-commerce platform Tapiture in 2014, and the company announced a year and a half later it was shutting down. But he’ll continue to look into tech investing.
“It’s smart because there are so many things that can happen,” Stoudemire said. “There’s so much room to improve, and if you’re onto something that’s really big, you’ve got a chance to have a big payday at the end, which is the ultimately goal for all of us. But you have to build your platform up.”
Stoudemire spent five seasons as Knicks teammates with another notable investor, Carmelo Anthony, and he has also formed numerous relationships in the tech world.
“Playing in New York, I met so many friends. A lot of my friends are engineers and in college and now graduating college that are in the tech space,” Stoudemire said. “So I’ve been learning a bit from my friends. Now living in Israel, going to seminars and doing keynote speaking, and now here in New York, I’ve been able to really gain a lot of knowledge in the space.”
Stoudemire ended up in Israel in part because he learned his mother had Jewish heritage. He came to enjoy visiting, learning the language and ultimately playing basketball there. Stoudemire’s ties to Israel have been strengthened at a time when sports technology business is booming there.
“I think the sports technology in Israel is starting to build more, and I think teams are trying to start to experiment with these different technology companies,” Stoudemire said. “I think here in the States, we are doing a great job of using the technology with all sports, whether it’s high school sports, youth sports, college or NBA.”
