Career Touchdown

Sean Kundu ’07 tackles legal and startup development with the San Francisco 49ers as he prepares for Super Bowl 50.

-By Anne Bergman

When Sean Kundu ’07 joined the legal team with the San Francisco 49ers, he had no idea he’d end up incubating a startup for the five-time Super Bowl champs. But he was ready.

Kundu is currently the vice president of the team’s New Ventures group. He focuses on overseeing legal and business development for the team’s strategic investment opportunities, but also spends a significant amount of his time as the general counsel for VenueNext, a startup technology platform and mobile app company designed for sports teams, concert promoters, theme parks, hospitality venues and hospitals.

For Super Bowl 50, VenueNext created an app for exclusive use in Levi’s Stadium by Bowl-goers. In addition to providing in-seat food delivery and mobile ordering and delivery for merchandise, the app offers instant replays, the full menu of Super Bowl commercials and a fan cam that will coordinate with the stadium’s Jumbotrons. “It’s been exciting and challenging,” says Kundu.

“My career is very different than a typical career out of law school,” he adds. “I think it shows that you can go down different paths.”

Sean Kundu '07 on the field of Levi's Stadium, home of Super Bowl 50. Photo: Meg Williams

Kundu says he first realized there were other options outside of practicing law after he completed Professor Lisa Klerman’s mediation clinic. “What I learned there, aside from legal skills, was also the critical skills you need to go beyond traditional legal learnings. Those were the skills that kept me from being pigeon-holed and gave me the opportunity to get to where I am now." 

He also credits Gould alumni, some he describes as “partners at the largest firms in the country and internationally,” with mentoring him while he was a law student. “They were all willing to set aside time for me,” he says. “I just called or emailed them and received a 100 percent hit rate. All of them let me pick their brains, which is why I make myself available now to law students who reach out to me.”

Kundu remains close to classmates who are also in the tech sector, Ashley Hu ’07, who’s product counsel at Google, and her husband An-Yen Hu ’07, a partner at Goodwin Procter. His wife, Megan Kundu ’07, whom he met his first day at Gould, works as corporate counsel at Lab126, a research and development subsidiary focused on consumer electronics at Amazon.

A longtime 49ers fan from his days as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Kundu began working for the team in 2013 as its director of human resources and employment counsel. Challenging work, as the team was preparing to leave Candlestick Park in San Francisco, its home since 1971, for the fanfriendly and modern Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, located in the center of Silicon Valley. The stadium upgrade meant that Kundu was tasked to scale up the staff from 120 to over 1,200 employees, as the new state-of-the-art venue was designed to host significantly more events — from outdoor hockey and international soccer matches to Taylor Swift concerts — year round, a big uptick from the 10 home games a season the team hosted at Candlestick.

Despite these formidable duties, it didn’t take Kundu very long to find ways to jump into handling transactional legal matters for the team ownership’s forays into outside ventures. “I just put on the other hat when I saw the opportunity,” he recalls.

For Kundu, who previously served as a litigator with Morgan Lewis and Fisher & Phillips, both in Irvine, it’s meant adapting to the world of dealmaking, Silicon Valley-style.

In addition to overseeing the VenueNext’s recent Series A private equity financing, Kundu was instrumental in completing a joint venture with celebrity chef Michael Mina and opening a year-round restaurant at the stadium, Bourbon Steak. Mina also hosts members-only tailgate parties with celebrity chef counterparts during home games.

And aside from the VenueNext deals with National Football League, Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association teams, Kundu is also consulting on a deal that could bring Major League Soccer and a new stadium to Sacramento.

Next up for Kundu  and VenueNext, is putting together the final details for a deal the company just signed with the New York Yankees, to provide the app in spring for use in their Bronx ballpark.