eBusiness Weekly
The death of Kobe Bryant, the retired LA Lakers star, his 13-year-old daughter and seven others in a helicopter crash yesterday has stirred up grief across the sports world.
It also had corporate leaders lamenting the loss of an up-and-coming business mogul. Mr Bryant was one of the greatest NBA players, with five championship rings and 18 All-Star selections in 20 seasons.
But he was building a business empire, too. He started the investment firm Bryant Stibel in 2013 with the Web.com founder Jeff Stibel. Bryant Stibel has invested in companies like Dell, Alibaba and Epic Games, the maker of Fortnight. He also invested in Bodyarmor, a sports drink maker in which Coke later bought a stake to compete against Gatorade and he founded Granity Studios, a media company.
“I got tired of telling people I loved business as much as I did basketball because people would look at me like I had three heads,” Mr Bryant told ESPN in 2017.
“But I do.”
The crash raises questions about the increasing use of helicopters for business travel. Aaron Mak of Slate notes that the number of civilian helicopters has grown 30 percent since 2006, and that choppers tend to crash more frequently than other aircraft.
What the business world said about Mr Bryant: The venture capitalist Chris Sacca: “Not sure I will ever know anyone else with his work ethic.”
The Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian: “He still believed he had work to do.” – nytimes.com
