New York (USA), Sep 2 – Serena Williams closes the curtain. She has been the most dominant tennis player of the last 20 years, on and off the court. She has a fortune valued by ‘Forbes’ at 260 million dollars and is the only athlete included in the list of the 100 richest women in the world. Her company, ‘Serena Ventures’, has a portfolio of 60 companies. Cryptocurrencies, food, psychology, sports franchises. She thus inverts the American legend.
With her charisma, the history of tennis has changed. She broke social and sporting barriers and from the humble Californian city of Compton she has reached the roof of the world. She will leave tennis with 23 ‘majors’ and 73 titles. To her innate sports talent she adds a nose for business, being one of the most coveted personalities by brands even in a period in which she has been away from the slopes.
Together with Nike, the firm that accompanied her during most of her sporting successes, she drew a special kit with hundreds of diamonds and shoes with 1.5-carat gold details with the writing ‘Queen’, ‘Mama’ and the initials ‘SW’. She has special clothes and shoes to face what will be the last US Open of her career, as she suggested in a recent interview.
At 40 years old, last Wednesday she offered a new sample of her tireless competitive spirit, giving herself an extraordinary victory against Anett Kontaveit, number two in the world, to prolong her New York path. Serena doesn’t want to talk about ‘retirement’, but about ‘evolution’, a process that she will see him dedicate to her family, her five-year-old daughter Olympia, and ‘Serena Ventures’.
ITS COMPANIES ARE WORTH MORE THAN 1,000 MILLION
Three-quarters of the companies Serena invests in are founded by women or people of color, according to official data. The American legend recently acknowledged that she likes to chase ‘unicorns’, referring to her willingness to step out of the lane and not homologate.
Thus, it invested in ‘Zigazoo’, the world’s largest social network for children, in ‘Nestcoin’, active in the field of cryptocurrencies, ‘Infinite Objects’, specialized in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), ‘Esusu’, a consultancy that helps improve credit, and also on ‘Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat products.
Her portfolio of companies has a value that the ‘Wall Street Journal’ recently estimated at more than 1,000 million dollars and the management of these investments is already a regular part of Serena’s life.
“I wake up and go to the office. Now that everything is digital, I just sit and answer calls all day. When Olympia goes to school, I go to work,” she said in a recent half-quoted interview.
THE STRENGTH OF IDEAS
76% of Serena Ventures companies belong to owners and founders who “do not have adequate representation.” 52% of these companies belong to women, 47% to people of color and 12% to Latino entrepreneurs, according to data provided by Serena Ventures.
“I like to invest in companies that have credible founders. It’s about the founder, whether we like the company, whether the founder has a good story, and why they chose that business,” Serena said in a recent interview.
Always on the lookout for business opportunities, Serena was also recently part of the group of investors with Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton who submitted bids to acquire English Premier League club Chelsea.
The American supported the offer of the consortium led by Martin Broughton, former president of Liverpool and the British Airways airline, putting nearly twelve million euros on the table, although the English club finally ended up in the hands of Todd Boehly, co-owner of the franchise of Major League Baseball Los Angeles Dodgers.
However, she does have odds with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and the NWSL women’s soccer team Angel City.
CHARITABLE COMMITMENT
Beyond business, Serena has always devoted significant efforts and donations to charitable activities, also being an ambassador for UNICEF and founding two schools in Kenya, in 2008 and 2010.
To that she added regular visits to schools and low-income communities to share her experience and support young people who grow up in environments considered ‘high risk’.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Serena also gave her input to provide masks to people with fewer resources.
“I’m super competitive, I see this as a ‘bonus.’ before Kontaveit.
She earned the luxury of competing out of a passion for the sport and will leave him a legend.