⭐Upside VC Profile: Cartan Capital & Chat with CiCi Bellis, Managing Partner & Former WTA Player

Cartan Capital is a private investment firm specializing in growth-oriented partnerships with businesses across a range of sectors, including technology, healthcare, and financial services. The firm takes a long-term, research-driven approach to investing, combining deep industry expertise with a commitment to operational excellence. Cartan Capital collaborates closely with management teams to support strategic expansion, innovation, and value creation, often providing both capital and advisory resources to help companies scale sustainably.

Here is a recap on their past investments:

Source: Cartan Capital, vendors, 2025

This week, we interviewed CiCi Bellis, Managing Partner of Cartan Capital a venture capital firm centered around seed and series a stage companies focusing on advances in human performance, sports tech and health tech.. We discussed her background, investment thesis, and what she is typically looking for when investing in women teams. She also gave us her advice to raise money and to start a career in sports investment.

Here is a summary of the best quotes of our interview with CiCi:

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Q1. Can you please tell me about your background?

“Absolutely. As you mentioned, I was a former professional athlete. I played professional tennis on the WTA tour for about five years. My career ended a little bit early due to some injuries that I had. So I decided to stop playing as I was finishing my undergrad degree. At that point, I worked for an early-stage sports tech-focused venture firm. I absolutely loved it—I stayed there for about four years. I did my MBA while I was there, and then back in 2023, I started to get the itch to build something on my own. So I decided to leave that firm and launch Cartan Capital. We launched our first fund in 2023.”

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Q2. Can you please tell me about your VC?

“Our first fund was a $10 million fund, focused on seed and Series A stage companies with a real emphasis on human performance. In January of this year, we launched our second fund, which we're targeting at $40 million fund. It’s the exact same thesis—we are still focused primarily on Series A, with some later-stage seed deals. We’re really excited about where we’re heading and the momentum we’re building.”

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Q3. What is your sports tech investment philosophy?

“I think our thesis around sports is to try and keep it as broad as possible. We look at anything under the sports umbrella—it can be fan engagement solutions, data and analytics, sports performance, streaming, and more. We want to ride the tailwinds we’ve been seeing in the sports industry over the last five to ten years and focus on areas where we can really support companies through our network and expertise. Lately, we’ve been particularly excited about the next generation of sports viewership—things like in-stadium experiences, more interactive broadcasting, and how Gen Z wants to consume sports. We’re also really interested in data and analytics, especially when it comes to optimizing athlete performance and decision-making using AI.”

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Q4. What are the things you are looking for when deciding to invest in a new startup?

“You mentioned a lot of great points—team, tech, go-to-market strategy, competitive advantage, and market size—and honestly, they’re all critical. For us, even at the early stage we focus on, team is still number one. Who is leading the company? Do they have deep industry expertise? Can we see them being leaders in the space? That’s a huge factor for us. Market opportunity is also massive—we’re in the business of supporting startups, but at the end of the day, we need to return capital to our LPs. So, we look closely at whether the market is large and growing. And yes, go-to-market strategy and business model matter a lot, too, but if you don’t have the right team and market, it’s tough to get behind the rest.”

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Q5. What are the sports tech sectors you are most excited about?

“Firstly, we’re really excited about what the next generation of sports viewership looks like. So that can be a very broad category—from in-stadium experiences to streaming experiences, to more interactive kind of broadcasting, things like that. We’re excited about that just because we know that Gen Z and below are going to be the ones streaming sports in the near future. They’re going to be the majority of people watching sports. So, how do they want to consume it? We’re really focused on that area.”

“I would say we’re also really interested still in data and analytics within sports—so trying to create better schedules for athletes using data, potentially AI as well… trying to gather as much data as we can from performance to make better, more informed decisions going forward.”

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Q6. Which sports tech startups you have invested in so far?

“On the sports side we have a few investments. So, firstly a company called AI.io—they’re in the data and analytics space for scouting, in addition to just extracting more data from performance. Also on the sports side, we invested into a company in the fan engagement space called Edge Sound Research, which we’re really excited about. And then there’s another one in the fan engagement space called Proto. They have a lot of applications in sports along with health as well. We also have another one that touches sports in a way, but that is more on the health side, called Springbok Analytics. So we have a good amount of investments that are solely sports related, but a lot that is touching on the sports health or other industries as well.”

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Q7. What advice would you give to anyone looking to start a career in sports tech investment?

“That’s a great question. I didn’t know much about sports tech investing when I first started, and I think that’s encouraging for people trying to break into the space. You don’t necessarily need to have prior experience—if you can land an internship and prove your worth, that’s often the best way in. That’s exactly how I started. It’s such a fun and dynamic industry, especially if you come from a sports background like I did. There’s so much to learn, and if you’re willing to put in the hard work, you can definitely find your path, even if you feel like you’re starting from scratch.”

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