10 successful celebrities who invest VC in startups and unicorns

Joe Montana is most interesting acknowledged for worthwhile 4 Great Bowls in the midst of the Eighties as a result of the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, nevertheless he’s now cementing a model new legacy as a top-tier investor.

Montana tops the list of celebrity VCs, these days launched by CB Insights, with a whopping 569 affords since 2020, and he’s moreover managed to once more 10 unicorn corporations all through that timeframe. Montana is the founder and managing confederate at Liquid 2 Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC fund. Actor Ashton Kutcher was a distant second place, with 118 affords and 5 unicorns backed, adopted by the Chainsmokers, with 101 affords and three unicorns backed. 

The report ranks 20 celeb patrons using a proprietary model often called a “Mosaic ranking,” which ropes in complete dealmaking train, the number of unicorns in an investor’s portfolio, portfolio exits by means of mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs, and further. Listed below are the best 10 celeb VCs from CB Insights’ report:

1. Joe Montana
2. Ashton Kutcher
3. Chainsmokers
4. Jay-Z
5. Kevin Durant
6. Mindy Kaling
7. Robert Downey Jr.
8. Will Smith
9. Oprah Winfrey
10. Josh Richards

These are faraway from the one celebrities involved in enterprise capital in latest instances. Others embrace Serena Williams, who founded Serena Ventures, Snoop Dogg with Casa Verde Capital, and Steph Curry with SC30 and Penny Jar Capital. Williams and Snoop Dogg are moreover on CB Insights’ report, ranking at 17 and 11, respectively.

What’s moreover notable about CB Insights’ report is solely what variety of expert athletes appear on it—six of the best 20 are or have been expert athletes. 4 of those are current or former expert basketball avid gamers. The NBA, significantly, seems to be a hotbed of VC curiosity, and the league itself even launched its own investment arm, often called NBA Equity, in 2022. The NFL adopted swimsuit with its private enterprise arm, often called 32 Equity. 

Even so, VC curiosity seems to be, at this degree, largely concentrated amongst NBA avid gamers, as Montana is the one NFL participant to land amongst CB Insights’ prime 20 this yr. 

Some well-known corporations that these celebrities have backed embrace milk-alternative mannequin Oatly (Winfrey and Jay-Z), plant-based meat agency Not attainable Meals (Kaling), and grocery startup Misfits Market (Kutcher).