23-time singles Grand Slam champion Serena Williams is in search of tech founders with a compelling story to inform.
The tennis icon turned interested by know-how lengthy earlier than retiring from the game in 2022. In 2017, whereas nonetheless on the skilled event circuit, Williams teamed up with Alison Rapaport Stillman to discovered Serena Ventures, a enterprise capital agency investing in early stage tech firms.
The agency raised $111 million for its inaugural fund and has since constructed out the staff to incorporate six different members. Serena Ventures has backed firms like gaming upstart Bunch, education-focused social platform Fiveable, Black- and Latinx-focused digital healthcare firm Hued, and a smattering of fintech and web3 firms.
On the Zeta Reside 2025 convention, Williams spoke candidly about her method to investing.
A give attention to private connection
Although Serena Ventures seeks out early indicators of development and market match, these aren’t the primary components it considers.
“One factor that we actually search for is a real story. Once we speak to founders they usually say, ‘Oh, it is a nice white house,’ we love that, however normally, we’ve discovered that founders don’t do as properly until they’d some form of private expertise” tying them to their mission, Williams stated. “Clearly, there must be a market for it, and a market match, however [a personal connection] is likely one of the important issues that we take a look at in founders.”
One founder within the Serena Ventures portfolio—whose firm she known as a “main unicorn”—informed her that his mom needed to promote her jewellery to fund his ambitions. He struggled financially to get began, and now, Williams stated, “he was tackling an thought not as a result of it was a white house” however as a result of he was personally compelled by fixing a particular drawback.
Dedication to the 98%
Past a private narrative that signifies a founder’s potential, Williams seems for startups that purpose to deal with widespread wants.
“Lots of VC focuses on 2% to three% to 4% of the inhabitants. We actually give attention to that 98%,” she stated.
She pointed to fintech startup Esusu for instance. The corporate studies hire funds to main credit score bureaus, serving to tenants construct credit score—a profit hardly ever out there since hire has traditionally not counted towards credit score scores.
“You understand how many individuals are affected by that, and how one can’t construct credit score?” Williams stated. “Your automobile invoice works for credit score, however your hire doesn’t. In order that drawback is dealing with [a huge percent] of the inhabitants. And so we strive to have a look at firms that almost all VC individuals [would pass up because they] need to give attention to that smaller quantity. These are trillion-dollar industries that we’re that have an effect on many of the inhabitants.”
Backing ladies and folks of colour
Since its launch in 2017, Serena Ventures has prioritized ladies founders and people from underrepresented backgrounds, in addition to upstarts growing revolutionary options that search to enhance fairness for ladies and folks of colour.
As of final yr, greater than half of the businesses in Serena Ventures’ portfolio are women-founded. The portfolio additionally consists of nearly 50% Black founders and over 10% Latino founders.
As a Black lady enterprise capitalist, Williams is uniquely positioned to bolster companies run by individuals from underrepresented teams, she stated, as a result of “you need to begin on the high. Should you don’t change that, it doesn’t move down in any respect.”
“It’s actually about who writes the checks,” she continued. “As soon as you modify who’s writing the checks, then you definately get totally different founders. When it’s the identical individuals writing the checks, they’ll get the identical traders, and it’s a vicious cycle, proper?
“We’ve got a number of ladies on our staff. We discover extra underrepresented founders. We discover extra ladies founders. That’s why our portfolio has a lot range—as a result of we see issues otherwise.”
