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Serena Williams Follows This Smart Yet Simple Principle When It Comes to Investing Her Millions

People generally know Serena Williams as an accomplished tennis player. However, she’s spent quite a lot of her time building another successful venture outside her sports career.

The 37-year-old mother of one has reportedly built an impressive investment portfolio composed of roughly 30 companies. Over the years, she’s spent millions of her hard-earned money supporting them. But, how does she choose which companies to bet her money on?

Investing With a Cause

Mayvenn, an African American-owned company that sells natural hair wigs, is one of the many companies Williams has invested in

When it comes to investing, Williams has a simple rule of finding worthy companies built by women and fellow African Americans.

According to the tennis star, she decided to invest in women-backed companies given the fact that these get less than 2% of the millions of funds that venture capitalist raise. And she’s right. In fact, female-led startups in the United States raise less capital from investors on average. These companies often raise a meager $5 million in funding compared to the $12 million male-fronted companies receive.

Being true to her word, one of Williams’ biggest investments is Daily Harvest, which is a female-owned delivery service for frozen meals.

She invests in African-American companies for more or less the same reasons. As the tennis star observed, African American startups often have great ideas but don’t get the same chances because of the color of their skin.

Bumble Fund

Williams with Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd

One of Williams’ recent investment moves is her partnership with the dating app Bumble’s own funding project.

First launched last year, Bumble Fund’s goal is to back early-stage businesses which are led by women of color and other minority groups. The fund reportedly gives away capital between $5,000 to a maximum of $250,000 with the average being $25,000.

Learning how impactful a woman’s voice can be through her own experiences, Williams is set to give other women the platform they need to be heard.

The tennis player’s partnership with Bumble started way before the funding project. She has previously starred in a Super Bowl commercial for the company. Her next project with them is a pitch competition for the Bumble Fund set to happen next month.

Other Strategies

Williams is married to Alexis Ohanian, Reddit founder, and fellow investor. They have one daughter together, Alexis Olympia.

This isn’t the first time that Williams is speaking about her investing strategies. She’s previously revealed in interviews that she’s also looking for companies that are focussing on a parent’s needs. Not surprising, since she and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, are now parents to a one-year-old daughter.

According to Williams, she feels like she understands other parents and especially mothers better now that she has a child and that somehow opened up new investment opportunities for her.

Of course, she doesn’t neglect to look into a company’s portfolio, success history, and product quality before investing in them. But most importantly, Williams makes sure that she only puts money into companies who offer products or services she actually believes in.

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