How Serena Williams went from winning Grand Slams to writing big checks
Though Serena Williams has hung up her tennis racket, the sports legend is still taking big swings, this time as an investor.
The 23-time Grand Slam winner has backed more than 90 startups as an angel investor and now as managing partner of her own venture capital firm, Serena Ventures.
The startups she has invested in include cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, women’s basketball league Unrivaled and Atlanta-based loss prevention software firm Freeing Returns.
She recently discussed her path to investing at the Mission Investors Exchange 2026 National Conference in Atlanta. In front of hundreds of philanthropy and impact investing professionals, Williams detailed her path from tennis courts to cap tables to try to bring more dollars to diverse-led startups.
“When I started seeing these new companies that were changing people’s lives in a different way, like making our everyday lives run differently — whether that was through technology, whether that was through consumer goods or whether that was whatever platform that was under — I was extremely curious about it,” Williams said.
While exploring investing, Williams went to a conference where she heard that less than 2% of venture funding went to women, and even less went to people of color. It lit a fire in her to become one of the people writing the checks and helping to change the demographics of VC-backed startups.
“I don’t think one person can make a huge change, but one person can use their platform and tell someone else, and then tell someone else, and then together, we can all come together and we can make those changes and make those numbers very different,” she said.
Williams quietly launched Serena Ventures in 2014, but didn’t unveil it for five years. She and her partners raised $111 million for their first fund, and are currently raising a larger second fund.
She said the outside expectation was that because she was Serena Williams, it was going to be easy for her to raise money, but she never had that attitude. She spent years building a team, meeting founders, using her own capital to invest and getting to know other VCs so that when she did go out to raise, she had expertise and a track record.
“I‘m a hard worker. I come from Compton. Everything I’ve gotten I’ve worked so hard for. Every Grand Slam I’ve won, I’ve worked really hard,” Williams said.
“I’m coming from an industry where everything I’ve done is always questioned. … But unfortunately, you know, you’re only as strong as you continue to go. And I don’t expect anything free,” she added.
For the founders she invests in, Williams is not only giving them money, but support and advice, too. She gives them her phone number and helps make introductions.
“I just feel like for me, it was more or less about using my platform for a different purpose, for a different thing. And I love investing, like, sometimes when I get off our weekly calls, I’m so pumped up,” she said.
“And I think it’s so important also for us to be at the table, to invest in this industrial revolution that’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. And I think that if we don’t, we’re going to be left behind.”
AJC Her+Story is a series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlighting women founders, creators, executives and professionals. It is about building a community. Know someone the AJC should feature in AJC Her+Story? Email us at herstory@ajc.com with your suggestions. Check out more of our AJC Her+Story coverage at AJC.com/herstory.
About the Author
Mirtha Donastorg is a reporter on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s business team focusing on Black wealth, entrepreneurship, and minority-owned businesses as well as innovation at Atlanta’s HBCUs.
