behind the tennis player, a shrewd businesswoman
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Until the last second of the last match of her professional career, there was no question for Serena Williams of departing from the principles that made her “The Queen of Queens”, as she was presented for her entry into the running on Monday 29 August, in what should be his last US Open. The conditional remains in place: as always with the American, it is she who controls the clocks of time, and no one else.
The tennis champion with twenty-three Grand Slam titles announced her imminent retirement on August 9 in the magazine vogue and on his Instagram account. After more than a quarter of a century of an extraordinary career, she explained that she wanted ” [s]concentrate on her role as a mother, [s]goals on a spiritual level, to discover a new but equally exciting Serena ».
Monday evening, after her victory in the first round against the Montenegrin Danka Kovinic, the former world number 1 remained voluntarily ” vague “ when and where to retire. “I think I’m at a point in my life where I’m not necessarily retiring. Simply, I evolve in relation to tennis. (…) But it’s time for me to move on. There are so many other things I want to do…”
At the dawn of her 41st birthday (she will celebrate on September 26), Serena Williams is preparing to switch into a new intense life, to the point of baptizing herself “Serena 2.0”: it has been a long time since the former boss of the circuit anticipates her retraining in the business world.
Become essential for sponsors
The best tennis player in history has already managed to grow an unparalleled track record and popularity in women’s sport by signing a dozen partnerships with sponsors of all kinds (Ford, Gucci, Gatorade, or even AbbVie, an American company specializing in pharmaceutical research). She did not hesitate to stage herself in commercials, such as this successful incarnation of Wonder Woman for the DirecTV television platform in which, armed with her racket, she overcomes a legion of machines.
Without forgetting her equipment supplier Nike, which she joined in 2003 and which has just opened, on its historic site in Portland (Oregon), a huge high-tech complex of 9 hectares named after the champion.
Beyond her advertising contracts, Serena Williams does not intend to sit on a personal fortune estimated by Forbes at $260 million (including nearly 95 million from tennis). The American has been a formidable businesswoman for almost a decade, with her company, Serena Ventures, which is involved in various sectors such as consumer services, technology or e-commerce.
The company founded in 2014 has invested in more than sixty projects, including thirteen start-ups considered today as unicorns (their valuation reaches or exceeds one billion dollars). Among them, emerge Impossible Foods (which manufactures meat and cheese substitutes from plants), MasterClass (an online conference platform) or Tonal (online sports courses).
“I’ve always been fascinated by technology, and I’ve always loved how it truly shapes our lives”, Serena Williams explained to New York Times. Sign that the company continues to rise, it announced, in March, a fundraising of 111 million dollars to accomplish his ” assignment “.
Even if she does not make it an absolute priority, the American makes it a point of honor to bring out new profiles in entrepreneurship. According Serena Ventures website53% of the company’s portfolio includes companies founded by women, and 47% by black people, “because that’s what we are”says the future retiree.
Even before launching her own investment company, Serena Williams was, with Venus, her sister, who became a minority shareholder in 2009 of the Miami Dolphins NFL football club in Florida, where they grew up.
“The same passion” in business as on the courts
But Serena Williams doesn’t just invest and wait, she gets personally involved too. She is thus part of several boards of directors, in particular of Poshmark, a reputable platform for the online sale of second-hand clothes and objects. The businesswoman is well surrounded: her partner in Serena Ventures, Alison Rapaport Stillman, went through JPMorgan, an investment giant, and she can also talk with her husband, Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the social network Reddit.
“I feel like I’m going to bed receiving messages from her, and waking up receiving messages from her again, recently explained to the magazine Fortune Alison Stillman. Nothing can replace tennis for her, but looking to the future, it’s exciting to see that she puts the same passion into it as she does on the courts. »
Like basketball star LeBron JamesSerena Williams also has her eyes set on television. She signed, in 2021, a contract with Amazon Studios to produce several series of documentaries to be broadcast on the video-on-demand service Prime Video.
And she does not intend to let go of the rhinestones and sequins of fashion, she who paraded on the catwalks and launched her own collection in 2018, after breaking the aesthetic codes of women’s tennis by wearing, on the courts, tight-fitting outfits and flashy. There is little doubt: as predicted by her young compatriot “Coco” Gauff, “we will continue to see Serena a lot”.
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