Klay, Steph and five other Bay Area athletes with money in the startup game

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In 2014, tennis superstar Serena Williams founded her own venture firm, Serena Ventures, which is based in San Francisco. It has invested in about four dozen companies, according to PitchBook. Investments include Daily Harvest, Tonal, Master Class and Olly.

Serena Ventures

Warriors point guard Steph Curry, pictured here with his wife Ayesha Curry, has been an angel investor for around eight years and has invested in more than a dozen companies, according to PitchBook, including Tonal, Brandless, Miro and Oxigen water.

Ron Leuty

Warriors guard Klay Thompson has been angel investing since 2019, according to PitchBook, and his portfolio includes Crosschq, Tonal and Dapper Labs.

Dominic DiSaia Photographs/BodyArmor

Warriors guard Andre Iguodala is an angel investor, an adviser at Menlo Park-based Concrete Rose Capital and has been a venture partner at Comcast Ventures since 2020. His investments include Lime, Dapper Labs, Allbirds, Casper and Shef, according to PitchBook.

Todd Johnson | San Francisco Business Times

Warriors forward Draymond Green co-founded 100K Ventures, an accelerator based in Flint, Michigan. He's also an angel investor and his portfolio includes Snackpass, Kin, Lobos 1707 and LARQ, according to PitchBook.

Todd Johnson | San Francisco Business Times

NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana played with the 49ers from 1979 until 1992 and went on to co-found the San Francisco-based firm Liquid 2 Ventures where he is a managing partner. The firm's portfolio includes GitLab, Rippling, True Pill and Nurx.

WellCare/PRNewswire

Former 49ers quarterback Kyle Kaepernick played with the team from 2011-2016 when he opted out of his contract. Kaepernick famously started kneeling during the national anthem to protest the oppression of Black and other people of color in the U.S. Since the controversy, he hasn't resigned with any other NFL teams and instead signed on as co-chair of a SPAC called Mission Advancement Corp. in early 2021, which will have an ESG and DEI focus. The SPAC went public in March 2021 and intends to acquire a consumer business valued upwards of $1 billion. Kaepernick has also invested in SpaceX, Apeel, Mmhmm, Valence and Bunch, according to an SEC filing.

Huntley Paton | Business Journals

By Sara Bloomberg - Staff Reporter

January 11, 2022, 12:48pm PST

On Monday, retired New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning announced he was joining the private equity firm Brand Velocity Partners as a partner and advisor.

“I went through a Private Equity 101," he told Bloomberg News, learning about the business over the past year by sitting in on business meetings. Other notable athlete-turned-investors include Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal and Tom Brady.

The Bay Area has its own unique trove of athlete-turned-investor stories. For example, former 49ers quarterback and television analyst Steve Young, who holds a law degree from Brigham Young University, founded his own private equity firm in 2007 called Huntsman Gay Global Capital, LLC, or HGGC for short, where he currently serves as president.

Click on the gallery above to learn more about seven other Bay Area professional athletes who have money in the game (of investing in startups, that is.)