Walsh Jennings hopes p1440's digital focus will provide sustainability, profitability and scaleGETTY IMAGES
Venture capitalist Theresia Gouw is the "first outside investor in p1440, the volleyball-centric digital media company" that Kerri Walsh Jennings co-founded last year, and Gouw "offers credibility and capital to a project that needs time to take root," according to Graham Hays of ESPNW.com. p1440 kicked off last September and "featured professional players and a nationally televised final." Walsh Jennings said that the plan was "always to focus on live events at the outset." However, she cautioned that live events are "expensive and finite." It speaks to a "recalibration that p1440 now bills itself as a digital media company, burying a reference to 'experiential events' deep in its mission statement." That future "appears to have a larger digital footprint -- live streaming, storytelling, training and other ways to connect an audience they believe wants more of the sport." Walsh Jennings: "We want sustainability, we want profitability, we want scale. The way to do that in today's world is obviously in the digital landscape." Gouw's involvement in p1440 now is as an "individual investor," not as part of the Aspect Ventures fund she co-founded (ESPNW.com, 7/24).
