
Former World No.1 Serena Williams attended the Black Tech Week in Cincinnati as the keynote speaker and represented her $111 million venture capital fund Serena Ventures.
The WTA legend spoke about how she invested little by little, while making the occasional bad investment.
"Little by little, I would start investing in one company, and one company, and I made a bad investment here or there," Williams said.
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With 98% of the funding going to white men and only 2% going to women and people of color, Williams said that it can only be changed if people who look like her are the ones writing the big checks.
"I think the only way to change that is to have people that look like me ... that look like you guys to be writing the big checks. That's when I said I want to start Serena Ventures and expand the angel portfolio, because that number I can't compute," Williams stated.
The 23-time Major champion also said that it was important for her to share her story as people might relate to it and it could help 'get them over the hump'.
"It's really important for me to share my story because you never know you might hear one word that's like 'I've experienced that' or 'I know what you're talking about', and that can get you over the hump," she said.
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Serena Williams will be back in action in the coming weeks. She is set to compete in the National Bank Open and the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, with her name featuring in their respective entry lists.
The 40-year-old will enter both tournaments using a protected ranking and is also on the entry list for the US Open.
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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