Erik was born and raised in the PNW. He learned to ski at Mt. Hood Meadows in Oregon. He learned to sail on the Puget Sound. Erik is married to Lela and is a girl dad to Livia and Janae.
Erik lives in Ballard and makes seed investments in companies based in Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, and New York City. To connect, text him at (206) 854-8814, email erik@kjell.org, or DM @erikkjell on Twitter.
Erik Kjell - Seattle, WA


Role
Product Lead
Dates
Month, 2018 - Month, 2019
Accomplishments
- Seed funded a startup with $2M from Dan Nordstrom
- Built a team of 8 including specialists in marketplaces, payments
- Designed an end-to-end licensing and royalty payment platform
- Negotiated a partnership with the NFL Players Association
- Reduced overhead of licensing department by a factor of 50:1
- Sub-licensed digital assets from NFL licensees Topps and EA
- Reduced the time to get a licensing deal from 6 months to 6 days
- Collected pre-paid, guaranteed, and advance royalty payments
- Tracked sales via API and computed revenues for reporting
- Computed royalty payments for 1,800+ NFL players on 32 teams
- Sold the technology to the NFL Players Association
Erik was born in Seattle and raised in the PNW. He learned to ski at Mt. Hood Meadows and learned to sail on the Puget Sound. Erik is married to Lela and has two daughters, Livia (4) and Janae (1).
Erik makes pre-seed investments in companies based in Austin, New York City, and San Francisco. To connect, text (206) 854-8814, email erik@kjell.org, or DM @erikkjell on Twitter.