Sports10x - What It's Like To Own A Cricket Team - Anand Rajaraman, Co-owner, San Francisco Unicorns (MLC)

13 May 2025 • 47 min • EN
47 min
00:00
47:43
No file found

Anand Rajaraman is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist known for co-founding Junglee, which was acquired by Amazon, and Kosmix, acquired by Walmart. He was Senior Vice President at Walmart Global eCommerce and is a founding partner at Rocketship.vc. Rajaraman is also the co-owner of the San Francisco Unicorns, a Major League Cricket team. Anand has invested early in companies like Facebook and Lyft and focuses on backing high-growth startups globally, but in this episode we will limit our conversation to owning a cricket team and maybe do another episode later to talk about Anand's entrepreneurial & investing success. ⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com San Francisco Unicorns website - https://www.sfunicorns.com/ Major League Cricket (MLC) website - https://www.majorleaguecricket.com/ Anand Rajaraman on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anandrajaraman/ In this episode, we talk about - - Why did he decide to buy a cricket team - The business angle of owning a sports team - Key revenue streams for franchise cricket leagues & teams - Leveraging data & technology in all aspects of team management - The signing of 2 Australian legends: Pat Cummins as a player, & Shane Watson as the coach - The emotional toll of owning a sports team & lots more Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction to Anand Rajaraman and the podcast episode (03:48) Why Anand decided to buy a cricket team in Major League Cricket (MLC) (05:18) Choosing the San Francisco Unicorns and the reasoning behind the team name (07:23) Parallels between business world and owning a sports team (10:59) Applying data and analytics to team management (13:35) Investment perspective on owning a sports team (18:26) Revenue streams for cricket leagues and teams (22:30) Player acquisition and salary cap details (23:52) Player selection strategy for the team (27:53) Discussion about Pat Cummins joining the team (33:11) Hypothetical scenario of Indian players in MLC (34:17) Emotional aspects of owning a sports team (40:12) Reflections on the 2024 season and reaching the championship match (42:43) Growth of cricket in the USA and impact of the 2023 World Cup (45:23) Long-term vision for team ownership (46:20) How to follow San Francisco Unicorns and Major League Cricket For sponsorship or guest appearance requests, write to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com Subscribe to VC10X on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

From "VC10X - Investing, Asset Management, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Family Office"

Listen on your iPhone

Download our iOS app and listen to interviews anywhere. Enjoy all of the listener functions in one slick package. Why not give it a try?

App Store Logo
application screenshot

Popular categories