“Businesswoman?” Serena Williams talks about funding and start-ups at Cincinnati’s Black Tech Week
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Serena Williams
23-time Grand Slam victor Serena Williams is the record holder for the most slams in the Open era for women. She has established her superiority throughout the years by holding the Women’s Tennis Association’s World No. 1 ranking for 319 weeks, including a joint-record of 186 straight weeks. She has also closed the year as the No. 1 player five times. She is one of the world’s best-paid female athletes.
Williams has also proven her business acumen as she created Serena Ventures in 2014, a micro venture capital firm that specializes in funding early-stage businesses. It was founded to emphasize diversity and is located in San Francisco. The company has invested in diversity 30 times, with the most recent diversity investment being made on April 20, 2022. 53 percent of Serena Ventures’ employees are female, and 47 percent of those are black women.
Also read: Serena Williams signs up for 2022 Cincinnati Open, builds up hopes for a possible US Open appearance
“I made a bad investment here or there” Serena Williams elaborates on the perils of starting a business
At Cincinnati Musical Hall, hundreds of technologists from all over the nation gathered for the conference’s centerpiece, Black Tech Week. Arguably the best female tennis player of all time, Serena Williams, spoke about her most recent endeavor: supporting businesses. Williams approached the stage to promote her $111 million venture capital company, Serena Ventures, wearing a dress from her own “S by Serena” line.
Serena said, “Little by little, I would start investing in one company, and one company, and I made a bad investment here or there.” “I think the only way to change that is to have people that look like me … that look like you guys to be writing the big checks. “That’s when I said I want to start Serena Ventures and expand the angel portfolio, because that number I can’t compute.”
The 23-time Grand Slam champion talked for 45 minutes at the Lightship Foundation event on Thursday, outlining her career as an investor and discussing her early business endeavors. “I was in fourth grade and I was selling donuts,” Williams said. “We would buy them for like 99 cents and we would sell them at school for a quarter each and then we would go buy some more, but I spent all my money at the ice cream truck.”
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