Photo: Serena Williams / Instagram
Serena Williams, an American professional tennis player and a winner of four Olimpic gold medals and 23 Grand Slam singles, has revealed the details about her own investment firm Serena Ventures. It turned out that during the last five years, Serena has been silently investing in more than 30 companies, including the leading crypto exchange Coinbase.
On Instagram, where Serena Williams has about 10.9 million followers, she has published a post that reads:
“In 2014, (yes I know I can keep a secret) I launched Serena Ventures with the mission of giving opportunities to founders across an array of industries. Serena Ventures invests in companies that embrace diverse leadership, individual empowerment, creativity and opportunity.”
Serena, who is currently ranked in the first place according to the Women’s Tennis Association, has been building up a portfolio since 2014. According to the official website of Serena Ventures, the company’s mission is providing opportunities to founders across a range of industries.
It is focused on startups, allowing them to expands their partnerships and encouraging collaboration among portfolio companies.
The company’s website also states that the market cap of the portfolio makes up over $12 billion, and the diversity of the founders of the companies in which the firm invested is 60%. Apart from the San Francisco-based Coinbase, Serena Ventures has also invested in Masterclass, The Wing, Mayvenn, Gobble, Coinbase, Billie, Tonal, Lola, and many others.
The company’s team includes Alison Rapaport, former asset manager at JPMorgan, who is currently the vice president of Serena Ventures.
The initiative of Serena Williams is a very positive event for the crypto space. The company established by the tennis star does not only help virtual currencies expand in the market through Coinbase but also demonstrates that traditional investors can place their funds in the crypto market.
Sports Figures Foster Crypto Adoption
Serena Williams is not the only sports legend who invested in digital currencies. In August 2017, the multiple world boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. became the ‘face’ of the project for the predictive analysis of the Stox markets and began promoting the ICO content marketplace of the Hubii Network.
When promoting Stox ICO, Mayweather said on Instagram that he was going to make a ‘ton of money’ from the capital raise. In September 2017, Floyd Mayweather called on millions of his Facebook subscribers to invest in the Centra ICO Crypto Project.
Last year, Sporting Clube de Portugal (SCP), a popular Portuguese football club, was considering launching an initial coin offering (ICO) as an alternative way to raise funds, but at that time nothing was decided on the particular subject.
Moreover, last year, a new platform 433 Tokens was created with a view to allow fans to vote on games and communicate with football legends. The project received the support of such soccer legends as Mr. Paul Scholes and Mr. Andriy Shevchenko, who decided to personally participate in the ecosystem.
