Network, Community and Reciprocity
This one-to-one chat focused on how networking is a key to building a success in business ventures while adding the elements of embracing community involvement and bonding at a local level, particularly in the case of Angel City Football Club. That Los Angeles professional women’s soccer team is part of a burgeoning trend in women’s sports, as female entrepreneurs align with elite athletes in building organizations that embrace the rise in pro sporting leagues led by women.
Moderator: Anna Magzanyan
Chief Strategy & Revenue Officer and Chief of Staff to Executive Chairman Los Angeles Times
Julie Uhrman
President and Co-Founder Angel City Football Club
Julie Uhrman founded Angel City Football Club with Academy Award-winning actress and activist Natalie Portman and technology venture capitalist Kara Nortman. In May of 2023, Angel City Football Club was named Sports Team of the Year by SBJ - the first women’s team ever to win the category. Before ACFC, Uhrman served as the EVP and general manager of OTT Ventures at Lionsgate, head of platform business development at Jaunt, a virtual reality content startup, and founder of OUYA, a pioneering Androidbased game console. Uhrman is active in the Los Angeles sports and technology communities. She is a board member of the LA Sports and Entertainment Council, The Rose Bowl Institute and the LA Sports Council, as well as an active executive in the LA Chapter of WISE (Women in Sports and Events).
Shared Insights from the Event
Anna Magzanyan: So what was that pivotal moment for you ?
Julie Uhrman: Truly, I never thought I’d have a career in sports. It never even occurred to me that I could work in sports, let alone be a president or an owner of a sports team. In 2019, after the U.S. Women’s National Team had just won the World Cup again in Paris, I met Kara Nortman, who’s my partner, when we were both playing basketball in a women-in-tech basketball summer league. She started her own fund called the Monarch Collective, specifically to invest in women’s sports, women’s sports teams and ancillary businesses centered around women. She pulled me aside and said, “Hey, Natalie Portman and I are thinking about bringing a women’s professional soccer team to L.A. You’re an entrepreneur. We have day jobs. Would you want to help us figure it out?”
Magzanyan: It takes a lot of work to curate a lot of prominent figures and leaders in the L.A. community to invest in Angel City - to believe in the dream. How did you go about doing that?
Uhrman: It was hard. We went out to raise money for a women’s professional team in L.A., which was a very hard sell. Understandably, parts of it, right? It’s a sports capital of the world. There are 11 professional sports teams here. There’s the beach and the mountains. There are two professional men’s soccer teams, so you can think the market is diluted - add to that three female founders who have never done this before in women’s sports. Add to that an entrepreneur, an investor and a celebrity. What do they know about running a sports team?
Magzanyan: But you made it happen.
Uhrman: From the beginning, our strategy was very different. We wanted to build an organization where mission and capital could coexist and where every single decision we made was about a positive impact in the community, because that will build the club. So we flipped the narrative, saying, “We want you to invest in us. This is now a startup. We own this idea. We own 100% of this. You can buy into it and support it with us.”
Magzanyan: What kind of impact has Angel City had, and what is your hope for this impact and what will it do for the future of the sports industry?
Uhrman: We wanted to build a team that was reflective of Los Angeles. And Los Angeles is an incredibly diverse community, and so we had the luxury of building Angel City for two years before we ever kicked a ball. The most important thing was building that community because we wanted that. Today, we are the only majority female-owned, female-run and female-founded team in professional sports. We will talk to everybody and anyone about how we have done it. Our Angel City sponsorship model, where we give 10% of our sponsorship dollars back into the community, is a key part of it. What we’re trying to show is that by doing good, we can do well by unapologetically telling the story as loudly as we possibly can. This will inspire others, and we have seen that it not only has an incredible impact in the community but also an incredible impact for our investors, and it has an incredible impact on the world of women’s sports.