Erik Kjell
As a strategist within Nike’s Innovation Accelerator, later Valiant Labs, I partnered with internal founders to launch direct-to-consumer experiments that challenged legacy assumptions and helped shape the evolution of NikeID.
The work helped position NikeID as a meaningful part of Nike’s broader DTC strategy, supporting personalization, margin growth, and digital revenue. By building with speed and intention inside a Fortune 100, we helped show how global brands can innovate from within.
That internal startup model also contributed to Nike’s broader DTC momentum and the strong growth of its global e-commerce business.
Since early 2023, I’ve partnered with Dior.com’s North American leadership to help rebuild its digital growth engine. The work aligned marketing, UX, and analytics with LVMH’s broader goals, bringing greater clarity to performance metrics and better transparency across teams.
Together, we rolled out targeted improvements across SEO, design, and digital campaigns. Dior has exceeded its ecommerce targets each year since, consistently outperforming stretch goals and raising the bar for digital performance in luxury retail.
The partnership has delivered strong commercial returns, showing what happens when strategy, creativity, and execution actually work together.
Operator
As co-founder of Prota Ventures, I took a hands-on approach to early-stage investing and company building. We backed bold founders with both capital and operational support where it mattered most.
We built a venture studio that helped launch companies like Figment, Stix, and Bird Buddy, each solving meaningful problems with ambition and clarity. Collectively, these ventures have achieved valuations exceeding $1.5 billion.
At Contino New York, I partner with Jon Contino to help founders and executives build brands that support real business momentum.
Jon leads the creative. I lead the strategy, the commercial framing, and the execution that brings it to life.
We work directly with decision-makers to build work that earns trust, creates recognition, and helps move the business forward.
Investor
In 2018, I co-produced a blockchain founder summit in Chicago that led to the formation of Figment. Today, Figment is one of the leading infrastructure providers in Web3, supporting over 700 institutional clients and managing more than $15B in staked assets across more than 50 networks.
The company reached a $1.4B valuation following a $114M Series C in 2021. We were the first investors.
I invested in CFX Labs in 2021 to support a more durable way for global platforms to access U.S. banking and settlement rails. CFX provides bank grade dollar infrastructure through FDIC insured sponsor bank partners, using tokenized bank deposits and a single settlement layer that supports treasury, payments, pay ins, and pay outs.
For calendar year 2025, CFX processed over $1B in settlement volume with over $120M in customer deposits, serving customers where speed, compliance, and settlement finality are non negotiable.
What Founders and Leaders Say
The Early Chapters
I grew up in Vancouver, then headed to Southern England for boarding school, university, and law school, not before working a run of very character-building jobs to pay my way.
Think salmon canneries. Commercial fishing boats. Door-to-door encyclopedia sales. World Book, baby.
From 1985 to 1989, I spent four years backpacking through Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. That time taught me how to stay curious, read a room, and move through unfamiliar places with more awareness and resilience.
In 1994, fresh out of law school, I followed my instincts to Ibiza just as the island’s nightlife was taking off. I worked for the owner of Privilege, then joined Manumission, where I booked major DJs and helped build what became a formative chapter in my life and career.
Looking back, it was completely formative and just the right amount of unhinged.
Things really started moving when I co-produced Manumission: The Movie. It somehow made its way onto Channel 5 in the UK, and that small win gave me enough momentum to chase the next one.
In 1998, Ashley and I moved to New York. That same year, I teamed up with three MIT grads to help start an adtech company called LiquidSite. It was peak Web 1.0. We raised $4 million in six months, and that startup became my first real MBA.
After that came Journeys by DJ, a record label and series of DJ compilation albums with names like Coldcut, Gilles Peterson, and Norman Jay. Some sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Others did not. That is the game.
Since then, I have co-founded and launched businesses across tech, media, and design. The throughline has stayed the same: build things that matter with people you believe in.
In 2020, Ashley and I moved to St. Augustine. Our daughters are growing up fast. So are we.