In America, you know the ball don't lie moment is in the revenue, the dollars, and you'd be laughed out of a room for saying people don't care about women's tennis because the money says you're an idiot. That's wrong. Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the people and trends that are shaping the future of business. I'm Diane Brady.
And this week, Kristen, one of my favorite people to interview, Alexis Ohanian, yes, the co-founder of Reddit, but now so much more. He is all about investing in women's sports. We interviewed him at our Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh, and he told us a lot about, you know, expansion of women's sports, not only in the US, but globally and in the Middle East too. Well, and let's just, you know, level set. One of the reasons I think he's so interested in women's sports is he has a much more personal connection now with Serena Williams, who's also investing in this area, and he has been an investor. This is a man who's been very successful with Instacart, Coinbase, you know, Opendoor. So as an investor, he's very successful. He's a man to watch. And of course, he's an entrepreneur. He is, I think one of the most interesting things he told me that week when we were there, is that he believes we're going to see a billion-dollar women's team within the next five years. He is very excited. He launched this new women's track and field competition Athlos, which just took place in Times Square in October, and he is confident that women's sports is just around the corner from being as, you know, profitable as men's. So he talks about that. He talks a little bit about his own leadership philosophy, which has changed over the years. And he also talks about some of the activism that he's done. I knew him originally from his battles over net neutrality, internet freedom. Obviously, we're now at a whole new dawn of what's going to be happening with AI. So we got into that as well. So spicy hot takes too.
Yeah, very much so. So I really enjoyed this conversation with Alexis Ohanian. I hope you do too, and we'll be right back after the break.
Cities are home to the majority of the world's population and account for 80% of global GDP. That makes the health and sustainability of our cities critical to creating a prosperous future. And of course, business has a role to play. Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte US, is the sponsor of this podcast, and he joins us now. Jason, great to see you.
Great to see you, Diane. Thanks for having me.
So how should businesses play a role in creating more vibrant and sustainable cities?
It's clear to me that the health of cities is inextricably linked to businesses' viability and success. I think it starts with an awareness or a recognition of that mutually dependent reality. I think the how is around collaboration, it's bringing to bear the capabilities of businesses to support cities' renewal and innovation, to understand the criticality of cities' role around economic prosperity, innovation as well as cultural exchange.
Jason, could you give us some examples of successful urban transformation projects that have been driven by these innovative business practices?
I'm proud to say that Deloitte, back in 2023, we started an effort called YES SF here in San Francisco, where I live. The launch of YES SF with other business collaborators has brought together our competencies around stimulating interest amongst innovators to bring sustainability and technology innovation to benefit the city itself.
Excellent. Well, that sounds like a very cool project. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
All right. Alexis, thank you so much for joining us here at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh.
Thank you for having me, of course.
So I want to start with you are wearing so many hats these days. Your founder, investor, gonna compliment a suit actually, wearing so many hats, hats and a nice suit. Your founder, investor, your owner, your dad, yes. Where are your priorities at right now? Give us a taste.
Literally, this week, my priorities, I'm not being the best dad, but I promise my girls, Papa's coming home Friday, there might be pancakes for dinner. You know, you gotta, gotta spice things up when you've been out of town for a week. So look, I'm spending all my time on the business side, building 776, and that's this venture fund that I seeded with my own capital. We also have outside investors, and we're ranging. We're investing in everything from MrBeast and Stoke Space to Angel City and, you know, women's sports, so a little bit of everything. And every now and then, I get to pretend like I'm a founder because of one of our incubations. And that's my most fun thing. Once a founder, always a founder, though.
I think it goes back to your roots. You know, this is your first time in Riyadh. So I want to talk about that a little bit. What's your impression? I know it's early days.
Early day, perhaps, yeah, literally. And what brought you here in the first place?
I've been in the region for a minute. I started doing business with the Emiratis probably a decade ago, so I've spent a lot of time there in the Emirates. And probably in the last five years, I started to see more and more of my peers from tech coming over here, raising money here, spending time in Saudi. And, you know, I was hesitant at first, honestly. And one of the things, especially in the last five years, that I've had a lot of success in has been emerging sports, and specifically women's sports. And for all that work, you know, which is very intentional work, it's, I believe going to be, you know, billion-dollar businesses that I'm building, but also things that I'm obviously very proud of, for the two girls who are watching, you know, why Papa has to go leave to go do work. I want it to be for a great reason. And so for all of that, I was hesitant. I wanted to make sure that when folks were inviting me out anywhere, that there's this sort of alignment. And I have to give credit to Princess Rima in particular, the ambassador, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. And Princess Rima has done an amazing job. You know, every time I've met with her, she's just very earnestly talking about not just the things she wants to do, but the things they are doing to help just bring about a lot of the progress that we'd love to see all over the world, but especially here. And so she's been an incredible ambassador, literally and figuratively for the kingdom, and it was thanks to her that I said, All right, you know what? It's time. I really want to, I want to see this for myself. And I've had such a warm welcome again, only a day in, but had such a warm welcome here and excited to spend the rest of my week.
Well, you don't look jet-lagged at all. You're doing great.
Because the coffee I'm hiding under the table.
So bringing us to Athlos then, which is your professional women's track and field competition. Tell us about that. When did it start? Why did it start? We want the full, full story.
You know, I first got into sports, and women's sports in particular, about five years ago, when I rage-tweeted about how undervalued the industry was, and in particular, women's soccer, women's football. And I proceeded to spend a million, about a million dollars, to buy an expansion in the NWSL, Angel City, now the most valuable in the United States. And I saw an opportunity, because every four years, especially in the US, we celebrated soccer, but it was women playing at the Women's World Cup was a much bigger deal, because the American men are not very good, and that disappeared, though, outside the World Cup. And I say, well, this doesn't make sense, because tier-one brands, tier-one audience, all this stuff happens every four years. Then they disappear. They're the same athletes. Why can't we have this year-round? And what I should have done was buy the league. I didn't. And so casually, well, should have done buy the league, honestly, five years ago, 10, $15 million probably buy the NWSL. It was in dire straits. It was the third league of its kind in the US. The first two had shuttered, like it was in a bad situation. So I got a second chance, because the Olympics were coming up. And I looked and I looked and I said, Okay, what are the most popular sports here that, again, have a legacy of American excellence, especially among the women, and that disappear in between? Track and field. Lo and behold, legacy of American excellence, especially the women, and a fantastic product, really engaging, really engrossing, top viewers, and then it disappears. And so last April, or actually, probably a little earlier, I started talking to the very fastest women in the world. They took my calls. I took notes, asked them a lot of dumb questions. Announced Athlos in April of last year with Gabby Thomas, instantly became the biggest prize money in the history of the sport, just because I doubled the top prize. And we've now come back. Around a year later, we had another meet in New York, great brands like Tiffany, Toyota, Cash App, Instacart, and I think now the numbers are in about four, four and a half million viewers for that event. And we're launching a full league, think like F1 for track and field next year. So we'll have three meets, I can't say all the places. Obviously we're coming back to New York, but major, major, major global capitals to have the fastest women in the world compete for great prizes and really make this sport into something, you know, that is not just once every four years, and to align around teams, you know, if you think Mercedes versus Ferrari in Formula One, I want you to think when you're thinking Athlos, Nike versus Adidas, hypothetically. And so we're working towards that end and really capturing what I think is an energy that just dissipates immediately after the Olympics, and it shouldn't.
What I'm curious, when you spoke to the athletes, can you tell us a little bit about who you spoke to and what they were saying that they really wanted, that they don't have currently?
So the big three who are now also shareholders in this league, so Gabby Thomas, Sha'Carri Richardson, and Tara Davis-Woodhall, all gold medalists, very well decorated. Really the best, the best, and massive social followings, which, as the Reddit guy, social following equals attention. Attention equals brand dollars, right? If you have those eyeballs, you can sell to brands. The biggest thing they asked for was investment, honestly, like part of it was in the form of prize money. So $30,000 was the top prize before Athlos, we just doubled it. Like I said, it was only $60,000, which it's real money. But if you think, relative to professional athlete, most of these athletes can't make a living on the prize money alone. So that was an easy way to at least be established as a tier-one option. And then, you know, a lot of the other things they wanted were a kind of modern structure around, you know, the storytelling of their sport. And so our job is to be a very tech-forward league in that we have to tell the story of these women every minute they're not on the track, so that people will care. And if you think about the Olympics, you may not know a name like Gabby Thomas until, if you're an American, a few months before the Olympics. And then the marketing comes out, the storytelling comes out, and then they do a great job of that. But we have a chance. These athletes are so dynamic, they're so natural on social media, we have a chance to tell their stories better and more often to a bigger audience all the time. And then this fun team format is going to be interesting, because you're putting athletes that are normally competing individually into a team format. This already exists. The NCAA does this, so a lot of these athletes are used to it. LSU, you're used to competing in your individual sport, but you get points on behalf of your team that can win the championship. So we're taking inspiration from existing infrastructure and saying, hey, well, what happens when these athletes are not just the very best in the world, but they're also miked up on the sidelines, cheering for the best to do it. And so when Tara is doing her long jump, I want the camera to cut back to her team screaming their faces off for her. And I saw this firsthand in another league, this one that I seeded, TGL, and I bought the first team in that league. This is Tiger and Rory's golf league, team golf league. And we saw these guys. So our team is the Los Angeles Golf Club. You know, these are golfers who, you know, they have personalities, but the sport historically, really tries to restrict it. Whispers, yes, it is a party, exactly. And these guys are really discouraged from being too energetic, right? Whereas, if you were out doing a round of golf with them just on a random Saturday, they'd have a great time, be much more energetic. So part of the job of the league and our team was just helping get the guys more comfortable being miked up, being their full selves. By the end of the season, they're screaming, their fists pumping, they're trash-talking. And again, if we can take the golfers, the PGA Tour, and make them an entertaining, prime-time sports product, I'm not worried about making up these athletes of track and field.
No, as you're talking, Alexis, about what you're building, the hallmarks of success, to me are reminiscent of tennis. You know, because Billie Jean King was the first to create an equal playing field for women in tennis. You know, obviously your wife, Serena, is both a star and an entrepreneur herself. I'm just curious, did any, in terms of any thinking that she brought to this, or anything that you've witnessed, that you felt this is what's going to make it important for women to compete. I know we're talking about something that's once every four years, but still, you're creating an ongoing fan base for this.
100%. Look, you know, it's, it's interesting, Serena, actually, when I first told her I was investing in women's soccer and starting a team, she actually tried to talk me out of it, in part because she had lived, right? She'd lived the other side of being an athlete in this sort of sports and women's sports system. And like you said, the WTA is one of the best, right? Because of Billie Jean King, you had pay equity, absolutely right? Because of that pay equity, you had a couple of girls in Compton decide they wanted to devote their lives to tennis, right? That's literally the reason. So without Billie Jean King, you don't get Serena and Venus, but without Serena and Venus, you don't get generational talent that then takes the sport out of country clubs and makes it one of the most popular sports in the world, certainly in the United States. And it created a stage where you could have excellence. It then again, because these tournaments were all at the same time, they could say, all right, fine, we'll market the women too. Then you get this amazing talent that grows the game in such a big way. And in America, you know, the ball don't lie moment is in the revenue, the dollars, and you'd be laughed out of a room for saying people don't care about women's tennis because the money says you're an idiot. That's wrong. And so that existing, and then having a front row seat to that obviously married to her, was the validation I needed to think, Well, okay, if it works in tennis, why not these other sports? And with soccer for an American audience, there's no concept of American soccer excellence that is not female, because the men are not excellent. So I can market excellence all day long, right? Even if you don't watch, I never watched the sport, but I knew who Mia Hamm was. I vividly remember Chastain scoring that penalty kick, beating China, tearing off her shirt, and screaming and like, oh, like those cultural moments of excellence meant I can market this sport to an American audience and have them think, Oh, sure, this is the best. And I think similarly, there's an opportunity here with track and field. FloJo, there's a whole history of excellence in American women's track and field, and I think it's just a hell of a place to build. So I'm excited.
