Serena Williams of the United States reacts during her Ladies’ Singles match against Maya Joint of Australia on day two of the 2026 Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London. Picture date: Tuesday June 30, 2026. ” width=”970″ height=”632″ data-caption=’Serena Williams during her Ladies’ Singles match against Maya Joint of Australia on day two of the 2026 Wimbledon Championships on June 30, 2026. <span class=”media-credit”>Andrew Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images</span>’>
Nearly four years after stepping away from professional tennis, Serena Williams returned to Wimbledon this year before withdrawing on July 4 due to a knee injury. Off the court, however, she has remained anything but idle: she welcomed a second child with her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, in 2023; launched a brand partnership with weight-loss telehealth provider Ro last year; and continued to expand her footprint in venture capital through Serena Ventures.
Williams quietly founded Serena Ventures in 2014, bringing it out of stealth in 2019 with a mission to back companies led by women, people of color and other underrepresented founders. The firm raised $111 million for its first institutional fund in 2022 and has since invested in more than 100 companies across fintech, health tech and e-commerce.
Its track record is notable: 14 portfolio companies have reached unicorn status, including Indonesian coffee chain Kopi Kenangan and weight-loss app Noom. More than half (54 percent) of Serena Ventures’ portfolio companies are founded by women, compared to just 1.1 percent of total venture funding that went to women in 2025.
“It’s super important for me to make a plan B while I was doing my plan A,” Williams said in a 2024 TikTok video about building the firm alongside her tennis career.
Here are the most notable founders backed by Serena Ventures, whose portfolio is 85 percent led by underrepresented entrepreneurs.
Kara Egan, Teal Health
Serena Ventures first invested in Teal Health in 2023 as part of an $8.8 million seed round alongside firms including Metrodora Ventures and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, and participated again in a $10 million round in 2025.
Egan, 45, founded Teal Health in 2020 to expand access to cervical cancer screening. Its flagship product, the at-home Teal Wand, has demonstrated detection rates for HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer, comparable to in-clinic testing, according to a clinical study funded in part by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health.
Egan said Williams’ firm has helped sharpen the company’s focus. “[Their support] strengthened our conviction that preventive care products must be designed with the same rigor around experience as clinical outcomes,” she told Observer, adding that the team has been an active partner in scaling the business without losing sight of patient needs.
Khalid David, TracFlo
Serena Ventures invested in TracFlo in 2021 as part of a $1 million prize package awarded through the HBCU Startup Pitch Competition at the Invesco QQQ Legacy Classic.
David founded TracFlo in 2019 to streamline financial management in construction, helping teams track time and materials, manage proposals and speed up payments. He previously worked as a safety engineer at Turner Construction and led Bunkers Hill Construction in New York.
In 2024, David participated in the Google for Startups Accelerator, where integrating Gemini helped improve customer efficiency on the platform by 80 percent.
Rodney Williams and Travis Holoway, SoLo Funds
Serena Ventures invested an undisclosed seven-figure sum in SoLo Funds in 2023.
Founded in 2018, the fintech platform enables users to lend and borrow small, short-term funds within a community-based model. Holoway, 38, serves as CEO, while Williams, 41, is president.
The company has facilitated more than 2.5 million loans to date. Despite a lawsuit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2025 over alleged misleading advertising (the suit has since been dismissed), SoLo Funds remains widely used.
Ishveen Jolly and Ronneil Nesbitt, OpenSponsorship
Serena Ventures backed OpenSponsorship in 2022 with a seven-figure investment.
Founded in 2015, the platform connects athletes, creators and wellness influencers with brands for marketing partnerships. Clients include Jake Paul, LeBron James, Taylor Fritz and Hailie Deegan, while brands such as Walmart, IZOD and Harmless Harvest have used the platform to secure talent deals.
Jolly, a former director for British Wrestling, has emphasized the link between content and engagement. “I feel like the performance is there because the engagement’s there. And the engagement’s there because their content is interesting,” she told the Sports Business Journal recently. Nesbitt, a software developer, leads the company’s technical strategy.
More Serena Ventures-backed founders
Mina Shahid, Catherine Denis and Benjamin Best founded Numida in 2016, a Uganda-based fintech platform serving small and medium-sized businesses.
Yele Bademosi and Joseph Taiwo Orilogbon launched Nestcoin in 2021 as a venture studio and holding company focused on crypto-native products.
Joanna Strober, Sharon Meers, Dr. Kathleen Jordan, Dr. Mindy Goldman and Jill Herzig co-founded Midi Health in 2021, a platform addressing women’s mid-life health needs.
Emily Hosie founded Rebel in 2021 to resell and liquidate overstock and open-box baby gear and home goods.
Wemimo Abbey and Samir Goel launched Esusu in 2018 to help renters build credit through on-time payment reporting.
Isoken Igbinedio founded Parfait in 2020, combining A.I. and human expertise to create custom luxury wigs tailored to individual measurements, skin tone and style preferences.
