General Lee Investments invests $100k to kick off the private round. But what does fantasy football have to do with it?
This post was originally written for investors of the ArkHAUS crowdfunding campaign. You can learn more on the campaign page here.
In 2001, exactly 20 years before ArkHAUS was conceived, a handful of UCLA recent grads had moved to NYC. We began playing fantasy football together and this league became more intense every year. Naturally, we had to name it “Be Legendary”. With many of us moving and spreading around the country, we started curating an annual fantasy football draft trip as an excuse to see each other and reconnect. The first few years were held in Las Vegas, where we spent time by the pool during the day, and secured an opulent suite to host the draft. Board shorts still soaked, we’d order pizza and draft around a large dining table. In later years, the league met in Cabo San Lucas and soon we were looking for new cities and more unique places to draft from.
In 2020, John “The General” Lee was living in Miami and suggested we look at renting a houseboat called Arkup. It was still owned by the makers and was available for charter or daily/weekend rentals. It was my turn to pick the location (ahem, I had won the league the prior year), and when John highlighted Arkup as a location, I was immediately in love.
I showed Arkup to Nathalie Paiva (ArkHAUS Co-Founder and CXO) after my solar electric yacht dreams had been repeatedly dismissed as “too far away”, and she was shocked to see that the future was already here (that story is here). Within a year, we went from envisioning a private members club aboard that original 75ft boat to what is now ArkHAUS — four 40ft Arkup boats, connected together in a floating villa, creating a most unique private members club.
When John said he had seen our video about ArkHAUS, I had completely forgotten that his message from two years earlier had marked the beginning of this journey. Within a minute, John offered to invest.
We’re proud to announce that John “The General” Lee funded his $100k investment, launching the Reg D private round (details on the 2 rounds here). With a target of $500k on the private round, there is $400k remaining and we already have substantial interest.
If you or someone you know is an accredited investor and interested in a larger investment, please contact me directly on LinkedIn or Twitter. For non-accredited investments of smaller sizes, please visit our Republic crowdfunding campaign page.
