Thursday, October 6, 2011 (Rain Date: October 13th) Longwood Grass Courts / 2:00 – 7:30pm
Welcome Back! BSG Team Ventures is proud to once again host the 5th Annual Benefit: VC vs. Entrepreneur Tennis Tournament – Davis Cup Challenge, and we are thrilled to have you join us.
The VC/Entrepreneur tennis community has been growing every year so please register now so we can build the teams early.
VCs vs. Entrepreneurs - Thursday, October 6, 2011
Format - Round Robin, Doubles
Time - 2:00 – 7:30pm (includes tournament, finals, cocktails, dinner and networking)
Location – Longwood Cricket Club, Chestnut Hill, MA
TENACITY – Transforming Youth and Building Community. Founded in 1999, Tenacity has served over 20,000 Boston students who otherwise would lack a safe, productive, and healthy after-school and summer environment. Our high-quality literacy and tennis programming not only build academic skills and improve fitness, they also foster the development of strong bonds between our students and caring staff, which instills the resilience needed to succeed in school and life.
September in New England is all about Fall, football, and at least for the last 4 years, philanthropy. On September 23rd, 2010, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and professional services providers celebrated the 4th consecutive year putting this tournament on.
The goals?
1) Sweat doing one of my favorite sports on one of its most challenging surfaces–
chasing a white ball around a grass lawn where the verb “to bounce” is used only in a relative sense. Imagine a super-high gravity environment where what goes down, stays down. A bit more like dropping a plate, versus bouncing a ball.
2) Compete in teams, with venture capitalists comprising one team, pitted against entrepreneurs, the other team. This brings together the two key stakeholders in the business ecosystem in which our firm operates. OK, so the entrepreneurs always get a bit feisty because they often feel the perceived chafe of the unspoken universal order, “those who have the gold make the rules.” But in this format, spicy works. Feisty is good. For further flavor, see video mash-up of the tournament highlights below.
3) Give to charity, and create a collaborative giving engine that may at some point outstrip at least this author’s individual efforts.
The supplemental benefits of combining these three above?
1) Sweating couldn’t be in a lovelier setting. The Longwood Cricket Club is just a spectacular venue, and again this year we were graced with perfect early Fall weather–blue sky highlighted by brilliant reds of the autumn maple trees ringing the club house and the courts. Sweating somehow is also a whole lot more fun on a tennis court if you play barefoot. Don’t try this on hard courts or clay folks. But at Longwood, all 40+ players doffed their togs and got back to nature (photos and video for up close and personals).
2) Competing with VC and entrepreneur teams brings out… well… a prime opportunity for trash talking in the safety of numbers let us say. It’s great to get both sides out in a friendly face off, united at the end for a good cause.
3) Giving to charity is something that seems easier the more perceived value is generated (for the altruist), or we receive (for those solipsists). This year’s charity was again the Tenacity program, founded by Ned Eames. We heard from some of the at-risk urban middle school children who have found Tenacity a backbone for discipline and achievement in an often keelless school environment. Hearing some of their stories made us all reflect on our paths to relative success, and how those challenges compared to what these children face. The goal was to raise $5,000 or more, and although the P&L is still being cyphered, we either met or came close to the target.
Who won this year? Technically, the Entrepreneurs won when toting up the total games score. However, the VCs took it in a hotly contested 10-game pro set finals match [see score card below]
The VC team was represented by Michael Balmuth of Edison Ventures and Michael Quinn of sponsor Silicon Valley Bank. This fearsome duo faced off against entrepreneurs Bill Stone, co-founder of OutsideGC and Dean Bogdanovic of CounterPath .
No doubt however that all players won in the larger sense what with the weather, the setting, and the collegiality.
Attributions:
To Sung Parkwho– as the poster-child for entrepreneurial ideation– decided years ago to innovate the fundraising process for his son’s school. To do this, he cooked up the first VC vs. Entrepreneurs golf tournament we took part in some 6 or more years ago. I asked him if he had the IP locked up on the idea or could I port the concept to the tennis court, and being the philanthropist that he is, he said heck no, it was “open source.” Thanks Sung.
To Longwood Cricket Club, who has been a supporter of the event from the beginning, and Larry, the head tennis pro, who makes it a pleasure to orchestrate.
Tenacity’s Ned Eames, who’s vision and personal tenacity has grown a philanthropic organization that touches thousands of inner-city youth with a caring and purpose driven mission. See www.tenacity.org for more.
To the captains of each team, who were elected in a rigorous vetting process operating under the game principle of “tag, your it!”
And of course, our guests/the players. Getting ~40 or so players to set prioritize their time and money during a weekday afternoon is definitely worthy of acknowledge and appreciation.
And Cristina, no doubt all of us thank you for all you did in helping to pull the event together yet another year!
Photo Gallery
Pre-tournament chalk talk
For the last pro set of the tourney, barefooting experiment for all
Boston Lobsters mascot, offering support for which team?
Grass court form can be quickly compromised by a bad bounce
Dynamic Xconomy sponsored team with ringer Lyn Calkins
Perfect serve form demonstrated by none other than Tenacity's Ned Eames himself
Doug Denny-Brown in serve-return combat pose
VC vs. Entrepreneurs 2010 Longwood Team
Entrepreneur Doug Denny-Brown, tennis gladiator at the ready
Welcome Back! BSG Team Ventures is proud to once again host the 4th Annual Benefit: VC vs. Entrepreneur Tennis Tournament – Davis Cup Challenge, and we are thrilled to have you join us.
The VC/Entrepreneur tennis community has been growing every year so please register now so we can build the teams early.
TENACITY – Transforming Youth and Building Community. Founded in 1999, Tenacity has served over 20,000 Boston students who otherwise would lack a safe, productive, and healthy after-school and summer environment. Our high-quality literacy and tennis programming not only build academic skills and improve fitness, they also foster the development of strong bonds between our students and caring staff, which instills the resilience needed to succeed in school and life.
On September 24, 2009, BSG Team Ventures hosted the 3rd annual Charity tennis tournament at Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill, MA. The format is a la Davis Cup, with venture capitals pitted against entrepreneurs.
We’ve been graced with great weather all three years, and this Thursday was nothing different, with a touch of Indian Summer in the air.
Although the teams were a bit smaller in number this year, many remarked (including the blogger) that there has never been a higher quality of play, or sense of competition.
The beneficiary of the charity tournament all three years has been Tenacity, the brainchild of Ned Eames, who founded it a decade ago this year to use tennis as a tool to help build discipline and academic achievement in inner-city at risk youth. Their 10 year Gala is coming up in the next week or two, so be sure to visit www.tenacity.org to learn more and register. It too will be held at Longwood, and is guaranteed to be a memorable evening with hundreds of supporters sharing food, tennis, and a shared mission together. Ned Eames is pictured below, with one of the Tenacity students, addressing this year’s tournament and conveying his story as to the value Tenacity has brought to his life and his family’s.
This year’s winners of the Longwood Charity Cup 2009 were the entrepreneurs, both the entire team, as well as the play-off match-up of best VC team and best entrepreneur team.
Per Suneby and Doug Denny-Brown played in the finals for the entrepreneurs, against the best VC team from the day’s play, represented by Will Peppo of Revolution Partners and Dan Waintrup. In a fiercely fought super-tie-breaker format, the entrepreneurs brought the Cup home for the year (above pictured winners Per and Doug).
Given the competitive nature of participants, several asked for statistics from the team score cards reported. The format dictated that each doubles team played together for the entire afternoon, and there were a total of 5 teams each, VC and entrepreneur.
The mean total game score for entrepreneurs? 22.6 games per team.
Mean total game score per team for VCs? 16.5 games.
Grumblings from both sides sounded very similar, with a refrain echoed that “[VCs/entrepreneurs] certainly had more time to practice this summer than we did….”
A special thanks to our sponsors, Silicon Valley Bank and Xconomy without who’s support the event would never have happened. Jim Maynard was much missed from SVB, but Jim’s bank colleague, Mike Quinn, held his own, and will clearly be coming back next year with Jim to present a fearsome twosome.
And this year we honor our first female competitor, Lynn Calkins, playing for the Xconomy team, and racking up a total game score with her partner than came in a close second in total team game scores. Thanks Lynn for coming out, and Xconomy for once again blazing the path of innovation in building their corporate team.
Per Suneby and Doug Denny-Brown, winner of 2009 Tournament
Finally, no reflection on the day would be complete without a total two-team photo of all who contributed their time and energy. Note that only one player dared play barefoot. Next year, we’re going to mandate that the last two games of the tournament will both be played shoeless by all teams. It’s an experience that needs to be added to everyone’s “bucket list”….
