[ad_1]
Serena Williams’s early-stage enterprise capital agency, Serena Ventures, has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million that can put money into founders with various factors of view, she instructed the DealBook publication. The funding agency led by the tennis star is already an energetic angel investor with a portfolio of 60 corporations that features SendWave, MasterClass and Day by day Harvest.
“I’ve at all times been fascinated with know-how, and I’ve at all times cherished the way it actually shapes our lives,” stated Ms. Williams, who has been investing for 9 years. “Once I met my husband, that was our first dialog. That’s how we met. I used to be speaking about investments.” Ms. Williams’s husband is the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
Ms. Williams, who holds 23 Grand Slam tennis titles, was impressed by a chat between Caryn Seidman-Becker, the chief govt of the safety firm Clear, and Jamie Dimon, the pinnacle of JPMorgan Chase.
Onstage at an occasion, Ms. Seidman-Becker stated lower than 2 % of enterprise cash went to girls. “I’m going as much as her afterward and requested, ‘Inform me about this 2 % — I do know possibly you misspoke,’” Ms. Williams recounted. “And he or she says, ‘No, it’s true.’ And I actually couldn’t wrap my thoughts round the truth that 98 % of all of this cash we’re speaking about — billions of {dollars} — goes to 1 kind of particular person.”
Serena Ventures doesn’t require that its founders come from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, although it says about three-quarters of its portfolio firm founders do.
The founding companions of Serena Ventures are Ms. Williams and Alison Rapaport Stillman. Ms. Williams’s different enterprise actions embody trend strains, leisure offers and a seat on the board of Poshmark. Ms. Rapaport Stillman beforehand labored at JPMorgan, Wasserman and Melo7 Tech. The fund’s restricted companions embody Norwest, Capital G (Alphabet’s progress fund) and LionTree.
[ad_2]
Supply- nytimes