A new profile on Forbes, details how injured NBA star Kevin Durant is trying to cash in on all the various aspects of his personality in order to end up with a 10-digit net worth when all is said and done.
Durant, who is not playing this year while he rehabs a ruptured Achilles tendon, is off to a good start as he will earn more than $70 million this season without suiting up for a single game thanks to $275 million Nike shoe deal and $164 million contract with the Brooklyn Nets.
Thanks to those contracts as well as some other endorsement deals, Durant will have made well over $500 million from salary and sponsorships by the time he hangs up his sneakers and retires from the NBA.
To help him continue to earn money once his playing days are done, Durant has established an outside business dubbed Thirty Five Ventures that employs more than 10 full-time employees who oversee the 31-year-old’s endorsements, foundation and media ventures.
Thirty Five Ventures also manages Durant’s investments and has seen him invest more than $15 million into 40-plus startups to date. According to Durant, those investments have paid off at a rate of nearly 400 percent.
Though it’s too early to tell if Durant’s wealth will hit 1o digits, it’s apparent he’s putting the lessons he learned while rubbing elbows with Silicon Valley executives and Bay Area venture capitalists as a member of the Golden State Warriors to good use.
“All the founders and investors come [to Warriors games], and you get to interact with and meet them,” Durant tells Forbes. “They look like normal people, but they are changing the world so fast and have so much power … I want to own and run an NBA team—run day-to-day operations and impact young players coming through the league.”
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