Businessman and investor Baron Davis has announced his partnership with Hennessy for their “Never Stop Never Settle Society” campaign. The serial entrepreneur and former NBA player is set to join the team as a board member and hopes to use his experiences to help champion Black entrepreneurs. The initiative, launched by the famous liquor brand in 2021, works to accelerate the growth of Black business owners across the US. The $1 million campaign, which Hennessy developed in partnership with talent development platform Marcus Graham Project, provides 20 Black entrepreneurs with
Olympian Allyson Felix‘s footwear brand Saysh, co-founded by her brother and business partner Wes Felix, has secured an $8 million investment in its series A funding round. The funding round led by Iris Ventures, with participation from Redpoint Ventures saw Gap Inc. acquire an equity stake in Saysh. Additionally, Athleta, a subsidiary of Gap Inc., has agreed to showcase Saysh footwear on their website in partnership with the footwear brand. The news comes after Allyson Felix announced her departure from Nike in 2021, due to claims the company was not doing enough to support pregnant female athletes and
Entrepreneurs Daa’iyah Fogle, a Claflin University alumnus, and Malcolm Lee, a graduate of Virginia Union University, are the winners of the NBA Foundation’s first-ever pitch competition in partnership with Black Girl Ventures. The joint competition, held in Cleveland, allowed college-aged entrepreneurs from HBCUs across the US to participate and pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges. The entrepreneurs eligible to participate in the competition were all Black Girl Ventures’ NextGen Program members. The scheme was created to support the next generation of Black and brown business leaders attending
Calaxy, a Black-owned web3 social marketplace, has raised $26 million in strategic funding co-led by Animoca Brands and HBAR Foundation with support from Polygon. This raise follows a $7.5 million seed round in 2021 with investors like Animoca Brands, Red Beard Ventures, ArkStream Capital, NGC Ventures, and Genesis Block Ventures. The seed round also had support from NFL player Ezekiel Elliott, “The Bachelor” Matt James, and former PayPal head of Blockchain Strategy Jonathan Padilla, among others. Calaxy aims to build a new infrastructure that allows content creators, ranging from small influencers to big-time celebrities, to
Religion of Sports, the media production company founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Shamrock Capital and joined by Elysian Park Ventures and Cerro Capital. The Series B funding round brings the company’s total to $66 million raised over three rounds. Chopra told The Hollywood Reporter that the raise will be used to help “grow the company from the production company model, which is what we have operated in for a long time, to really controlling our own destiny. To really bet
LeBron James has officially become a billionaire, according to Forbes. This makes James the first active NBA player to reach the milestone and the second NBA player to reach billionaire status, joining retired basketball star Michael Jordan. It comes after he landed the number two spot on Forbes’ 10 Highest-Paid Athletes of 2022 list, following Lionel Messi, who snagged the number one spot. Now that James is said to be worth an estimated $1 billion, let’s break down the numbers. James has made $387 million from the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, and Los Angeles
Web3 platform, HEIR, co-founded by Michael Jordan and his son Jeffrey Jordan, is set to introduce its first athlete membership NFTs. On the Magic Eden NFT marketplace, NBA player Lonzo Ball will be featured in an NFT collection dubbed “Zo.” HEIR launched its first NFTs in March — a collection called “6 Rings” that paid homage to MJ’s six titles. They sold out the initial 5,005 allotments for 2.3 SOL each, worth roughly $221. How does it work? Rather than simply acquiring digital collectibles of their favorite athletes, HEIR enables fans to gain membership to
Entrepreneur Jordan Edelson has announced his next venture with the launch of TradeZing, a live-streaming, social engagement, Web3 platform designed for Millennial and Gen Z traders. The platform claims to “harnesses the power of community and content creation across stocks, cryptocurrency, NFTs and the Metaverse to educate, elevate and entertain.” TradeZing’s announcement comes on the heels of their sponsorship of Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, the world’s largest Bitcoin conference of the year. It aims to create a community and provide traders with fun, educational and entertaining content. Featuring livestreams on trending
Athlete and activist Colin Kaepernick and his partner’s Canadian businessman Jim Nikopoulos and activist Akim Aliu have made a seed investment in Naomi Osaka’s KINLÒ brand with Kaepernick joining the brand’s board of directors. Osaka has also brought on a new brand President, Mia Meachem, who joins KINLÒ with over 20 years of brand marketing experience with roles across notable beauty brands including Drunk Elephant – a part of the Shiseido organization, The Estee Lauder Companies, and Burt’s Bees. In her new role as President, Meachem will help to drive
Serena Williams’s early-stage venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million that will invest in founders with diverse points of view. The achievement comes nine years after she first started the project and has taken on a portfolio of more than 60 angel investments. The investments were all backed by the athlete’s own money. For those who aren’t aware – an angel investor is an individual who uses their own funds to support a start-up company or project. “As an angel investor, you can only
