Michael Blank is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Connect Ventures, a new venture firm with origins as joint venture between Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Blank works in partnership with his co-founder, Nicole Quinn, to oversee the fund’s investments in the Seed and Series A rounds of early-stage consumer businesses in media & entertainment, sports, gaming, health & wellness, and e-commerce & marketplaces.
Blank departed CAA in October 2025, after serving 15 years in a variety of leadership positions. He most recently was Head of Consumer Investments, where he led a cross-departmental team of agents and executives, guiding CAA’s involvement in the joint venture investment vehicle with NEA, which focused on tech-enabled startups across the consumer landscape. Launched in January 2020, the joint venture made more than 30 investments across consumer categories, including TMRW Sports, Harper Wilde, OpenSea, and Jomboy Media, among others.
Throughout his career, Blank has taken a scalable, systematic approach to innovation, helping architect, build, and launch new businesses and areas of growth. Blank helped launch the agency’s mobile division, spearheading all apps and games for clients, and Caravan, a Vancouver-based startup studio where he served as Co-Founder and Board Director.
Previously as CAA’s Head of Mobile, Blank helped conceptualize and launch talent-driven mobile apps and games, including projects with Tom Hanks, Gordon Ramsay, Ariana Grande, Vin Diesel, Lady Gaga, Kevin Hart, and Buster Posey. He worked closely with Carrie Underwood to help launch fit52, an at-home fitness business, in partnership with Caravan, and Tony Gonzalez on FitStar, a fitness coaching app, which was acquired by Fitbit in 2015.
He was involved in launching audio-based news briefings on Amazon’s Alexa with President Joe Biden, called Biden’s Briefing; Love, Nala, a direct-to-consumer pet food company; and BlueLine, a mobile games studio that partnered with Tom Hanks to launch HANX101, an Apple Arcade exclusive trivia game. Blank had also worked closely with Hanks on his typewriter app, Hanx Writer, which was named App Store Best by Apple, and partnered with Gordon Ramsay to launch two mobile games, Chef Blast and Restaurant Dash.
Blank recently co-authored Decoy Saves Opening Day, a children’s picture book with LA Dodgers superstar and three-time MLB MVP Shohei Ohtani. Inspired by Ohtani’s real-life dog, Decoy, the book was published by HarperCollins in February 2026 and supports animal rescue organizations.
Blank currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Chargers Impact Fund, which has awarded more than $12 million in direct community assistance and is focused on youth empowerment and community advancement across Los Angeles to create opportunities in under-resourced neighborhoods.
Blank has two young children who inspire his imagination every day. A lifelong baseball fanatic, Lego enthusiast, and avid sports memorabilia collector, he graduated with honors from Yale University with a B.A. in Economics and was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2016.
Nicole got the entrepreneurial mindset at an early age, by helping her late father build online pharmaceutical marketplaces in the ‘90s, angel investing in the '00s and starting her own startup in the '10s. She obsesses over consumer behavior, cultural trends and unique growth channels.
Nicole spent the last 10 years at Lightspeed Venture Partners, scaling the firm from $2bn to $30bn+ AUM. She co-ran the Consumer team and worked with beehiiv, Calm, Cameo, Character AI, Daily Harvest, Daybreak, Girlboss, Goop, Hungryroot, Lightyear, Multiverse, Rothy’s, Zola and, perhaps most importantly, Haus Labs as that was where she originally met Mike Blank and CAA in 2017 when incubating the beauty brand with Lady Gaga.
Earlier, Nicole spent a decade at Morgan Stanley covering retail and internet. She did the IPOs for Facebook, GroupOn, Prada and Pandora.
“All of this gave me an understanding of what exceptional founders act like,” she says. “They’re on a journey and I want to provide support (in good and bad times), insight, and peripheral vision.” Nicole is happiest when helping others realize their full potential and then amplifying it. She likes to invest where there is an inherent Consumer behavior with a new technology overlay.She holds a degree in math and economics from the University of York, England and an MBA from Stanford.
