Serena Williams is widely regarded as one of the greatest female tennis players in history. Williams last competed in a competitive tournament in September 2022, at the US Open. She withdrew from the competition after losing in the third round to Ajla Tomljanovic. She won 23 Grand Slam titles in total.
Williams is now focused on entrepreneurship, having launched a dozen businesses. According to Forbes, she works with over 60 startups through her firm, Serena Ventures, which raised more than $111 million in its first fund.
Serena Ventures’ website states that 53% of the companies in its investment portfolio are led by women. Furthermore, 47 percent of the company’s founders are black, and 12 percent are Latino.
Looking beyond the tennis court, here are seven notable businesses supported by Serena Ventures that you may not be aware of.
Tonal
Tonal is a new gym in town. In 2019, the company raised $45 million in Series C funding from a group of investors that included Williams. The tennis legend was later named a brand ambassador as part of the company’s “Strength Made Me” campaign.
“The way I train is always changing, but strength training has been fundamental to my performance, and that’s why I love the Tonal so much. It’s a different way to train that challenges me and has made me a lot stronger,” Williams said.
“At the beginning of my career, I didn’t embrace strength — I had it, I looked it, I felt it, but I didn’t embrace it. Once I did, I realized that there is something so beautiful about being strong, and I’m proud to be a part of this Tonal campaign that celebrates that.”
Noom
Noom monitors a person’s food consumption and exercise habits. Serena Ventures provided undisclosed investment funding to the subscription-based company in 2019.
Announcing her investment, Williams said, “I’m a true believer that everyone should have easy access to a healthier life, which is why I decided to invest in Noom.
“Noom’s mix of empathetic human support, paired with modern technology and science, makes it possible for people to achieve significant, lasting behavior change.”
In addition, in 2021, the company raised $540 million in Series F funding led by Silver Lake. Oak HC/FT, Temasek, Novo Holdings, Sequoia Capital, RRE, and Samsung Ventures were among the other investors in the round.
MasterClass
Serena Williams owns a stake in the MasterClass online learning platform. It gives you access to over 150 instructors and classes in business, design and style, entertainment, sports, gaming, and writing.
Stears
Stears is a Nigerian company that provides financial data and insights. Businesses and professionals can subscribe to the startup’s data and insights. The company was founded to address the challenges of obtaining data-driven insights on the African continent, with a primary focus on Nigeria. Serena Ventures was one of the investors in the company’s recent $3.3 million seed round.
“One of the reasons I invested in Stears is not because of my love and appreciation for Africa, but because Stears has strategically thought of how to increase the investment community on the continent,” Bloomberg quoted.
“Better and more transparent business and financial data is expected to lead to more investment on the African continent. Stears has shown a deep appreciation of the complexities involved in solving this problem for global professionals. Through a combination of technology and data, Stears is well placed to leverage the massive data opportunity on the continent,” she added.
Esusu
Esusu is a financial technology company that specializes in rent reporting and data solutions for credit development. Serena Ventures contributed $10 million in Series A funding to Esusu in July 2021.
“We invested in Esusu’s mission and have a strong conviction in the potential of this space,” Williams said in a statement at the time. “The tech-enabled model really creates win-win situations for stakeholders from renters to landlords. Our significant investment in Esusu will help the company scale and unlock more financial opportunities for people.”
Mahmee
Williams is also an investor in a Los Angeles-based digital startup that monitors maternal health digitally.
Mahmee plans to use technology to halt the continuous rise in maternal mortality among black women in the United States.
To date, the network of the technology company includes 1,000 providers and organizations such as UCLA, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Altamed, and Cedar-Sinai Medical Center.
Williams’ investment stems from complications during childbirth. “She had to have multiple operations when she sustained a pulmonary embolism the day after giving birth to her daughter at the age of 36,” Vogue writes.
Melissa Hanna founded Mahmee in 2014, an online platform that allows women to track their own and their children’s health after giving birth. The company connects users with supplemental health professionals, such as lactation consultants, to ask questions that do not require them to contact their doctor.
Lolli
Williams is a cryptocurrency investor as well. She was drawn to invest in Lolli because of the company’s mission to make Bitcoin accessible and inclusive to people of all backgrounds. Williams said in a statement, “I’m excited to announce my investment in Lolli, a company on a mission to make Bitcoin more accessible.” “Being able to earn and own Bitcoin is a step toward financial inclusion for all.”
Lolli, which was launched in 2018, is a reward app that gives users Bitcoin when they shop at its partner merchants. Over 1,000 merchants and 250,000 users are now part of the company. In an interview with Coindesk, Lolli co-founder Alex Adelman stated that the company currently offers an average of 7% bitcoin-back rewards at retailers such as Kroger, Microsoft, Booking.com, and Ulta.