Doug Baldwin, A Former Wide Receiver For The Seattle Seahawks, Is A Notable Chief Technology Officer
By Alexander Theriault
Doug Baldwin, a former wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, is a notable chief technology officer.
Doug Baldwin is now a businessman, but his body still mistakes him for a football player. The former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver has been more than three and a half years away from the last NFL snap and is far from a new career in technology and investment. It took very little time to reset the body clock which let him know it was time to start summer. “My body has been adjusting for over 24 years,” Baldwin, 33, told ESPN. It’s not just the physical part. That’s the mental and emotional part of it”. Unable to use up that excitement in football, Baldwin struggled after his 2018 season as his eight-year NFL career came to an end.
It didn’t help that his body was wrecked, requiring four surgeries after enduring many injuries during his senior year. I even tried to stay in shape after the surgery. Baldwin has made a name for himself as his Super Bowl champion, two-time pro bowler, and the third-best receiver in franchise history, catching 493 passes for 6,563 yards and 49 touchdowns. And he made money, according to Spotrac, with gross earnings on the field of about US$40 million. He also just became a father and had the first of three children in the spring. It was the right decision to retire, but it was painful.
“I’m not a doctor, but I think he was clinically depressed during his first eight months of retirement,” Baldwin said. “I know it was me. Otherwise you can’t tell me. I have a wound”. He’s in a much better place now. And something else entirely. Baldwin is the founder and CEO of Vault 89 Ventures, a venture capital firm. The investment vehicle was named after Baldwin’s jersey number and, in his words, “Money is not our goal. We believe that doing things from an empathic perspective and doing it to make people’s lives better has an economic part”.
Baldwin is also CEO of He Ventrk, a Bellevue, Wash. startup that specializes in health and fitness. His main product is He TheraCentric, a physical therapy app designed to streamline at-home exercise programs and maximize patient engagement. He has over 1,000 active users of TheraCentric, most of them from local physiotherapy clinics. Earlier this summer, Ventrk spun off from Intellectual Ventures. Intellectual Ventures is a mentored and funded private equity firm.
It’s no coincidence that Baldwin’s current role has something in common with another project he helped back before his retirement. It is a community/health center for underserved youth and is expected to be completed in March after construction delays due to COVID-19.
