By Andrew Cohen
It’s a career shift some may find perplexing. But for Mark Kahn ’00, transitioning from high-level tech lawyer to jack of all trades Oakland Ballers employee has been wholly exhilarating.
Kahn is an investor, legal counsel, and public address announcer for the Ballers, a new baseball team in the independent Pioneer League. The team’s leadership group is striving to build community and rekindle the East Bay’s passion for baseball amid the Oakland A’s’ recent floundering and impending departure after this season.
The NBA’s Golden State Warriors left Oakland for San Francisco in 2019, the NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020, and the A’s start a three-year holdover stint in Sacramento next season while their Las Vegas stadium is built. The Ballers aim to help fill that void while connecting East Bay culture to their entire operation.
In the 1990s, Kahn managed ticket operations for the A’s, and he’s long been a baseball enthusiast. A summer associate at top firms such as Fenwick & West and Orrick, after a federal clerkship he worked at a San Francisco litigation boutique before shifting to in-house roles in 2006. For approximately 15 years, he worked at tech companies of various shapes and sizes, including WhatsApp (where he was deputy general counsel) and Segment (where he was general counsel and helped shepherd the company’s $3.2 billion sale to Twilio).
Scrambling to get the Ballers ready for the season required a round-the-clock approach — Kahn made six trips to Home Depot in two days, for example — and he never considered working behind the mic until the change came serendipitously. Below, he describes his new labor of love and the joy of keeping baseball in Oakland.
What have you enjoyed most about your work in the Ballers’ first season?
Kahn: Helping to make it all come together. We started from zero. If you stood on Raimondi Field in early March, you would’ve seen a run-down, unplayable baseball field. Three months later, we were playing professional baseball games on that same field with all of the stadium infrastructure built up around the field. Working with the City of Oakland, the community, our organization, and all of our partners has been deeply satisfying. And we’re only just beginning.
Also, I absolutely love being the team’s public address announcer — that’s scratching a completely different itch I didn’t even know I had.
Minor league baseball is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise. Why does that appeal to you?
Kahn: Throughout my legal career, I have gravitated towards startups. While I’ve worked at bigger companies, I have been happiest at startups. But I’ve never worked at a startup like this — super early-stage, tangible, and very visible to the public. Plus focused on the community. I love seeing the effect the team’s efforts (as well as my personal efforts) have on the community.
What are your main responsibilities as general counsel, and what areas of law are you mostly working in?
Kahn: Like any other startup, my responsibilities are all over the place. Prior to the season, I was spending a lot of my efforts as general counsel working with the City of Oakland to get the ballpark ready. That also involved a lot of contracts — the agreements with the city, but also the engineering firm, the general contractor, and various vendors. I also spent more time than I cared to getting various insurance policies and programs in place. As we got into the season, my focus shifted more towards policies and procedures around HR, ballpark operations, things like that. And now, as we launch our crowdfunding initiative, I’m spending a lot of time on corporate matters.
How did you first become involved with the Oakland A’s, and what lessons did you gain from that experience?
Kahn: This is definitely taking me back. I worked for the A’s in the mid-90s before I went to law school. I had been working at a now-defunct ticketing platform company and the A’s had signed on with us to power their season tickets. They were looking for someone with deep knowledge of the system, and given my role, I was uniquely situated. Probably the thing that stuck with me most from my A’s experience is how invested and passionate A’s fans are. What differentiates A’s fans from a lot of other fan bases is that it really felt like a community.
You had a very successful career as a tech lawyer. What drew you back to baseball?
Kahn: I didn’t intentionally seek this out. When I read about the Ballers back in December, I reached out to founder and CEO Paul Freedman to inquire about investing. I told him that, as a former A’s employee, I was heartbroken by their situation and excited to get involved with the Ballers. Initially, I wrote a small check but offered to help out operationally. Paul said something to the effect of “What kind of cycles are you talking about?” And I said, “I don’t know. What kind of cycles do you need?” And from there, it just kind of took off.
Given that this is the last A’s season in Oakland, how important is it for the Ballers to build a strong community foundation?
Kahn: We believe strongly that no one owns baseball in Oakland — this sport has a long history here that goes back decades and no one can just up and leave with that legacy. We’re fundamentally a group of fans who want to not only preserve Oakland’s baseball legacy, but revitalize it as a key cultural touchstone for the community.
We want to ensure that fans, residents, players, and more continue to experience the joy and community spirit that baseball brings. Building a strong foundation has been key as we want to create a lasting, positive impact by investing in local talent, engaging fans, and providing a fun, exciting, and community-focused team that will remain in Oakland indefinitely. Our commitment to staying in Oakland and building a championship-caliber team reflects our determination to keep baseball alive and thriving in this great city.
In what ways do the Ballers reflect the East Bay’s culture?
Kahn: Oakland and the broader East Bay’s culture is embedded in everything we do. Built by and for the community, the Oakland Ballers are driven by a grassroots, community-led initiative, mirroring the East Bay’s tradition of collective action. Our diverse ownership group and inclusive ethos highlight the region’s commitment to embracing diversity and collaboration as a strength.
We also fundamentally believe that the social contract between team owners and fans is broken and that Oakland, a city with a rich legacy of fighting to make the world a better place, is the perfect city to reimagine something different. That’s why, as a part of our crowdfunding campaign launch, we’re offering fans an unprecedented bundle of rights that includes checks and balances on key team decisions including where the team is based, changes to the logos and brand marks, and even some front office hiring decisions.
Oakland’s resilience and fighting spirit are embodied in our decision to reclaim and protect our baseball heritage, honoring the legacy of local legends like Frank Robinson and Curt Flood while creating new opportunities for young athletes. Playing at Oakland’s historic Raimondi Park, which showcases Oakland-specific art, allows us to celebrate local food vendors and music creating an accessible, fun and welcoming environment for all. We want to deliver a joyful, community-focused experience that unites people, celebrating the East Bay’s love for sports as a unifying force. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to be a Baller, you just have to love Oakland.
How do you measure success for this inaugural season and beyond?
Kahn: Every time someone comes to a game and leaves happy, excited to come back, and bring friends, we’ve succeeded. We want to be known as a welcoming place that engages and unites folks from all over Oakland and the greater Bay Area community. When you see someone wearing B’s gear, you should know that that’s someone who loves Oakland and believes we can do anything when we come together as a community. Also, we want to see the future of baseball be set up for success and so we’re investing in local youth programs and more. Finally, we want to develop a winning team that makes Oakland a championship city once again. We’re here to win!