Lightspeed Venture backs professional Frisbee league in San Jose

By VCPOST Staff Reporter

Feb 27, 2014 01:38 PM EST

Lightspeed Venture Partners has invested in a team owned by a Cisco Systems executive. The San Jose Spiders will be part of the Professional Ultimate Frisbee this year, according to Upstart Business Journal.

Lightspeed partner Peter Nieh and team owner Andrew Zill revealed the Silicon Valley executives who will be part of the game: Sergei Brin of Google, Brian Acton of WhatsApp, Dave McClure of 500 Startups, Eric Migicovsky of Pebble, and Charlie Cheever of Quora. Peter Rives, the co-founder of SolarCity, is known to be one of the world's best Frisbee players, the report detailed.

The Spiders was acquired last year by a consortium led by Rob Lloyd, the president of Cisco Systems Inc. The team will begin its inaugural season with three of the seven best players in the US: Ashlin Joye, Kurt Gibson, and Beau Kittredge. The league derived its name from the Internet term that describes bots crawling around the web to collect search engine data. Although it bears San Jose's name, the Spiders' first game will be played at Foothill College in Los Altos, the report explained.

Nieh did not disclose the exact amount that Lightspeed invested in the team, but he did say that supporting a 24-man professional team for four months won't be cheap, Upstart Business Journal reported.

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