"From the tech world to the padel courts, three friends Jessica Talbert, Katie Lampert and Neil Chainani left their careers in tech and fintech to pursue a new dream: building a local sports community around one of the world's fastest-growing games, padel. (Talbert and Chainani, now married, are expecting their first child.) Think of padel as tennis meets squash. It's played in doubles on a smaller, enclosed court where players can hit the ball off the glass walls for fast, continuous rallies. A massive hit in Europe and Latin America, the sport is now taking off in the United States."
"Jessica: Katie and I went to undergrad together and played rugby. We'd always talked about starting a business Later, Neil and I worked together at Lyft in research and data science, and we'd also talk about starting something one day. It wasn't until the summer of 2022, when all of us happened to be traveling in Europe, that we discovered padel. We saw it first in Lisbon under the bridge, which actually reminded us of San Francisco then again in Rome, and finally in Spain, where we spent a week learning how to play. People were obsessed with it total beginners and semi-pros playing side by side, all having fun."
Three former tech and fintech professionals transitioned into sports entrepreneurship by founding Park Padel to build a local padel community. Jessica Talbert, Katie Lampert and Neil Chainani discovered padel while traveling in Europe in 2022 and learned to play in Spain. The founders launched public courts at San Francisco's Embarcadero in November 2023 and opened a flagship club in South San Francisco in November 2024. Park Padel emphasizes community, fast rallies on enclosed courts using glass walls, and has ambitious plans to expand across the U.S. West Coast. Talbert and Chainani are married and expecting their first child.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]