🔥Upside Chat: Joshua Bonhotal, Director at Sequence Equity, and Former NBA/NCAA Performance Executive

This week we had the honor to interview Joshua Bonhotal, Director at Sequence Equity, a leading multi strategy investment platform dedicated to backing resilient technologies, sports, and innovative businesses that enhance the human experience.

Picture: Josh Bonhotal, Purdue University

Joshua is a Director at Sequence Equity, where he leads investments across sports teams, leagues, and sport adjacent technologies. Prior to this role, he served as VP of Operations at Future, scaling the company from seed stage to series C and over $100m raised from top Silicon Valley VC's.

Joshua Bonhotal, Purdue University

He also served as the Director of Sports Performance for Purdue University's men's basketball team, where he was instrumental in developing six NBA players. Earlier in his career, Bonhotal was a Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Chicago Bulls, working closely with MVP Derrick Rose. His expertise has been featured in prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Joshua located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from our conversation with Joshua:

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Q1. Please tell me about your background and your role at Sequence Equity

"I am a venture slash private equity investor with a pretty non-traditional path. In retrospect, I never could’ve seen it, but it’s as though the stars were always aligned. I started off in basketball where I was fortunate to be part of a lot of great teams over a decade-plus and reach the heights of my first career as a Performance Director. That success ultimately led to me getting recruited by a pretty insane group of co-founders to build a tech-startup in San Francisco called Future. I had no clue what I was getting into, but made the leap anyway. Through those experiences scaling Future, I built great relationships with several of our earliest investors which is how I landed at Sequence. Today, I have a dream job as a sports investor where I get to combine a lifelong passion for sports, expertise as an elite coach and startup operator, and a diverse network of deep relationships across sports & technology to go find and invest in the best teams, leagues, and tech companies.”

Q2. How did you get the job with the Chicago Bulls?

“I started with a dream to one day play for the Bulls that I refused to give up, which ultimately led me to find another way in. Success leaves clues, so I studied people who were in positions I hoped to get to, and tried to emulate parts of their journeys. I reached out to anyone who might know more than me, and every person I met inevitably opened the door to someone else or another opportunity. Building relationships and being persistent led me to become a student-assistant for men’s basketball–and several other sports–my last year of undergrad. Ultimately, it was my mentors at Wisconsin who opened the door for me to meet Erik Helland, the Bulls head strength coach. Given how highly they spoke of me led to Erik offering me an unpaid internship as my first job out of college. I approached every day as though “today is my job interview” and that level of intention resulted in the Bulls bringing me on full-time a year later as the assistant strength coach.”

Q3. Can you please tell me about Sequence Equity?

“Sequence is a multi-strategy investment platform. Currently, we invest across two funds; an early stage venture fund and a sports private equity fund. Out of our venture fund, we partner with pre-seed and seed stage founders building transformative technologies that enhance the human experience. We think about this in terms of 3 categories; human optimization, human connection, and human resilience. On the other end with our sports fund, we invest large checks into sports teams and leagues globally. Again, we focus on 3 core buckets. The first is minority stakes in teams in established sports leagues such as the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL. Next is larger stakes in emerging sports”.

“This includes women’s sports, newly formed sports in domestic leagues, established sports in emerging markets, and an area where we’re particularly bullish is direct investments into college sports at the conference and school levels. Lastly, we invest in sport-adjacent businesses and technologies at the growth stage and later. We believe through our differentiated network and vast range of experiences across elite sport, building companies, and investing in unicorns, we sit in an interesting position to make intuitive connections on opportunities and add value across our portfolio, from technology companies to sports, in a way that hasn’t really been done before.

Q4. What is your sports tech investment philosophy?

“On the venture-side our sports tech investments are largely consumer-facing products with a much bigger market opportunity than simply sports. The thesis of our first fund centered on human performance, which we define as the intersection of sports, health, and technology; primarily software. We look to elite sport for the latest advancements in technology and related approaches to managing day-to-day health & performance which we believe can and should become commercialized as effective solutions for the rest of us more broadly. Some examples from our portfolio include Oura ring for sleep, Levels for nutrition, Open for mindfulness through the power of shared experiences, Future and Ladder for working out to catalyze an overall healthy lifestyle. More recently, we’ve invested in companies like Zoomph and Loti which have applications to help grow and protect the business side of sports teams and leagues that can also be extended to big brands and athletes or celebrities more broadly.”

Q5. What are the things you are looking for when deciding to invest in a new startup?

"We start with people. The founder and early founding team is everything. We want to see deep industry knowledge, a clear competitive edge, and the resilience to navigate challenges. Beyond that, the product has to address a real market need and have the potential to scale. We look for companies that have a defensible technology or business model—something that makes them difficult to replicate. The best founders are those who not only have a strong vision but also the flexibility to pivot and adapt when necessary. Scaling a company from zero to a big exit is really hard, so we want to back people who have that athlete-mindset, who we know will just keep showing up and find a way no matter how impossible it may seem. And that’s a mindset we all share internally at Sequence."

Q6. What advice would you give to anyone looking to start a career in sports tech investment?

"First and foremost, play long term games with positive-sum people—treat people right, and keep showing up. Stay curious, network relentlessly, and develop a strong understanding of both technology and the sports business landscape. This is a fast-moving space, and those who can spot trends early will have a major advantage. It’s important to not just follow the hype but to really understand what technologies will have staying power. Talk to athletes, coaches, and industry experts to get insights into real-world challenges. And, don’t be afraid to take calculated risks—the best investments come from being non-consensus and right, so you have to be betting on innovation before everyone sees it as mainstream."

Q7. What made Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah special players?

"Derrick and Joakim had a massive impact on my life. They were the heart and soul of our Bulls teams—two guys who were the best teammates you could ask for, and who left it all on the court every night. Joakim’s intensity was unmatched by anyone in the league and Derrick with all of his explosiveness and savvy had the ability to take over any game at any time. He made it look effortless, changing speeds and shifting into a gear nobody else had. Everyone else was in slow motion as he would just blow to create for others or get any shot he wanted. Derrick was the best athlete I’ve ever seen, and the fastest basketball player to ever step foot in the Bulls’ facility. And Joakim? He was the emotional leader, the kind of player who would make himself the target of our opposition, taking on all of the pressure to free up our team. He’s just a winner. He did whatever it took to win. Those two together were the most humble superstars you’ll ever find but also had the killer instincts of the greatest competitors we all admire in sport. Watching them together on a nightly basis was truly special. Joakim and Derrick both have had a lasting impact on anyone who’s ever been around them, and I’m excited for all the ripples they’re going to create in this next chapter beyond basketball in the community of Chicago and with other initiatives like NBA Africa."

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