Just Women’s Sports has raised $3.5 million in seed fundraising. These are the investors who made it happen.

Will Ventures

Will Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that leverages the power of sport to shape the future across health, media, and consumer.

Brian Reilly (co-founder and managing partner at Will Ventures): Prior to founding Will Ventures, Brian served as Vice President at Blue Star Innovation Partners, where he was responsible for deal sourcing, due diligence and execution of growth equity investments. In addition to his investment expertise, Brian has deep technology experience, gained as a Founding Member and the Director of Product and Research at the Sports Innovation Lab, the premier sports technology research and advisory firm, and as a product manager at MC10, where he was responsible for the development and commercialization of next-generation sports, fitness and healthcare wearables and software systems for big data storage and machine-learning. Brian earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and was a member of the college’s varsity football team. He is from East Windsor, New Jersey.

“It’s hard to believe that the founders of ESPN struggled to convince investors that a 24/7 sports network was a major opportunity,” said Reilly. “We expect to look back at the opportunity in women’s sports and feel the same way. There’s nearly a 50/50 gender split when it comes to sports participation, but only ~4% of coverage is dedicated to women’s sports. That gap represents a venture-scale opportunity, and we’re confident that Just Women’s Sports is uniquely positioned to seize it.”

35Ventures 

Co-founded by two-time NBA champion Kevin Durant and his business partner Rich Kleiman, Thirty Five Ventures incorporates the duo’s business entities across sports, tech, media, philanthropy and more. Recent Thirty Five Ventures initiatives include The Boardroom, a multi-platform sports business/culture-focused vertical, the basketball-themed scripted series “SWAGGER” with Imagine Entertainment and Apple, an equity partnership with premium audio brand Master & Dynamic, and the Durant Center, a state-of-the-art educational and leadership facility in Durant’s hometown in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

“We’re excited about this investment in Just Women’s Sports not only because we recognize the huge opportunity for growth in the space, but because Haley is exactly the kind of founder we want to be in business with,” said Rich Kleiman. “She uniquely understands what’s missing in the conversations around women’s sports, and she’s also building her business with incredible knowledge and foresight.”

OVO Fund 

OVO Fund is a seed stage venture capital firm that provides funding and support to startups at the earliest stages. They partner with exceptional teams with real technology looking to build transformative yet capital efficient businesses. OVO Fund leverages an extensive network of industry veterans to provide focused value-added capital to our entrepreneurs. Prior to this round, OVO Fund also invested in JWS pre-seed.

Supernode Global

Community + Capital for startups that are shaping the future of how we learn, work, play and communicate. Supernode Global is focused on the digital content ecosystem, supporting early-stage startups building or using technology in the creation, distribution, or monetisation of digital content.

Drive by DraftKings

Drive by DraftKings is a multi-stage venture capital firm that invests in SportsTech and Entertainment. Drive is unique among investment firms as a fully independent and highly strategic venture capital partner. Together with founders pushing the frontier of new markets and categories, their mission is to ‘drive’ the future of sports, gaming and media by supporting people with the ‘drive’ to unlock their full potential and chase big ideas.

“Despite women making up 40% of all participants in sports, they only receive 4% of sports media coverage, which leaves a massively undervalued and untapped industry ripe for growth, support and opportunity,” said Meredith McPherron, Drive by DraftKings CEO and Managing Partner. “Just Women’s Sports has taken an early leadership role in promoting equality in sports and bringing visibility to the exciting success and stories behind exceptional female athletes. We’re so pleased to have them join our portfolio.”

Jim Quagliaroli

Co-founder of Silversmith Capital Partners, Jim Quagliaroli, has served on the board of 20+ tech companies. Jim partners with passionate founders of growing SaaS companies focused on product leadership. His software investments are targeted on supporting competitive, team-oriented CEOs who want to invest in aggressive go-to-market initiatives to drive growth. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he roots for  the Celtics, is a rabid EPL fan, and has learned that he is a better coach than player. A recipient of the John P. Reardon ’60 Award, given annually to Harvard’s top male scholar athlete, Jim has sports running through his blood. He has served on the Advisory Board of the Harvard Varsity Club (HVC) since 1997, and currently serves on the board of Friends of Harvard Soccer (FHS).

Arike Ogunbowale

Arike Ogunbowale is a professional basketball player for the Dallas Wings. At the University of Notre Dame, Arike hit back-to-back game winners to lead her team to the National Championship in 2018. With Dallas, Arike is the reigning WNBA scoring champion and an All-WNBA First Team selection. Internationally, Arike has competed with USA Basketball on multiple levels and has accumulated five USA Basketball medals (four gold and one silver). She has been nominated for ESPYs (2018, 2019) and took home one of those ESPY nominations for her buzzer beater to win the NCAA title.

“I’m a huge sports fan, and I know from being a fan of women’s sports how much we need a place that puts everything behind promoting and covering our sports,” Arike said. “Just Women’s Sports is the clear leader in women’s sports coverage, so I’m excited to be part of what they’re doing. There are great things ahead.”

Elena Delle Donne

Elena Delle Donne is a professional basketball player for the Washington Mystics, whom she led to their first-ever WNBA title in 2019. A two-time WNBA league MVP, Elena is the only player in WNBA history to join the exclusive 50-40-90 shooting club. Drafted by the Chicago Sky with the second overall pick in 2013, Elena spent her collegiate career at The University of Delaware, where she was a two-time All-American.

“I’m so excited for what Haley is building with JWS. I believe in her and her vision for this company and platform,” Elena said. “We know fans of women’s sports are an underserved audience, and there’s a huge opportunity for growth. The fact that this is the first female-led media company that is fully VC funded is amazing. I’m beyond thrilled to be part of what they’re doing.”

Said Amanda, Elena’s wife: “I am really excited for Elena and I to expand our portfolio with something we care so much about. There is a tremendous lack of coverage of women sports and women in general. We want to do everything we can to continue to give women the platform they deserve.  We feel JWS is the best company for us to partner with and do so. Really excited to be part of the JWS family!”

Hilary Knight

Hilary Knight is one of the most decorated players in the history of women’s ice hockey. As a member of Team USA, Knight has won an Olympic gold medal, two Olympic silvers, and eight gold medals at the IIHF World Championships. In 2019, she helped found the PWHPA, a group of professional players who are working to create a more sustainable future for women’s hockey.

“I’m so excited to join the Just Women’s Sports team to help expand a platform that will change the way women’s sports are covered,” Hilary said. “As we work to build sustainable professional leagues and bring the stories of incredible athletes to the forefront, we also need consistent in-depth coverage of our games so that fans can be fans all year round. JWS has laid a foundation, and with these investments and more, they’re going to change the game for women’s sports.”

Kelley O’Hara

Kelley O’Hara is a professional soccer player, two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, and Olympic gold medalist. She currently plays as a defender for the Washington Spirit in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and the United States women’s national soccer team. She is also the host of the Just Women’s Sports podcast, where she sits down with the world’s biggest athletes to discuss the untold stories behind their success.

“I’m excited to double down on my partnership with Just Women’s Sports,” O’Hara said. “We’re long overdue for a platform to exist that covers the world class athletes competing out there and the amazing stories behind them. As a professional soccer player, I’ve experienced firsthand how important visibility is for women’s sports and in order to grow the game for everyone, we need investment like this.”

Sam Mewis

Sam Mewis is a professional soccer player who plays as a midfielder for Manchester City and the United States women’s national team. Voted the Best Women’s Player in a poll conducted by ESPN FC in 2021, Mewis has won three NWSL championships, an NCAA title, and the 2019 World Cup with the USWNT. Alongside Lynn Williams, she also co-hosts Snacks, a new podcast from Just Women’s Sports.

“It’s been amazing to be part of the Just Women’s Sports team as the co-host of our podcast, Snacks,” Mewis said. “The team’s vision of what women’s sports coverage can and should be is inspiring. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to play a role in both helping expand our show lineup and investing the resources necessary to grow the platform.”

Kleiner Perkins Scout Fund 

For five decades, Kleiner Perkins has partnered with intrepid founders to build iconic companies that make history. Today, they continue that legacy, investing in founders with bold ideas that span industries and continents, partnering with them from inception to IPO and beyond to maximize the potential of their ideas.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.