Kevin Durant's Business Savvy Fuels Innovation

Kevin Durant narrowly missed being a Portland Trail Blazer in 2007, when the team selected Greg Oden just ahead of him as the top pick in the NBA Draft. Fifteen years later, Durant is a different kind of trailblazer: one of the top athletes in the world, to be sure, but also an entrepreneur and investor on the rise. In 2016, Durant, who now plays for the Brooklyn Nets, and his manager, Rich Kleiman, started Thirty Five Ventures, an investment firm focused on media, tech and entertainment. The alliance served as the all-star forward's foundation for creating his own lane in the business world, and it helped redefine the types of partnerships and investments athletes engage in. With a focus on investments in tech-advanced companies such as NFT marketplace OpenSea and social experience platform Topia, Durant's growth into a tech maven is a case study in the evolution of the modern athlete-businessperson. This includes a portfolio that looks more like that of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist than an endorsement-laden athlete. In fact, Durant's proximity to Silicon Valley during the three years he played for the Golden State Warriors led to connections that inspired him to pursue tech investment. Today, Thirty Five Ventures' investment portfolio includes more than 100 companies. Durant and Kleiman count Postmates, Coinbase, Robinhood and Acorns among their firm's key holdings. But Thirty Five Ventures goes beyond investing. Durant and Kleiman also have a philanthropic arm and have pursued television and film projects. They were executive producers on the Academy Award-winning short film Two Distant Strangers, and Durant co-created the sports drama series Swagger that premiered last October on Apple TV+. In 2019, Durant and Kleiman started Boardroom, a sports business media network that also includes lifestyle and culture content. "When you combine two people's experiences and their vision is the same, it's very powerful," says Kleiman, who began working with Durant in 2013 when he signed with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Sports. "Because we each had our own experiences, both in life and in business, we both had a vision of what we wanted to do." Boardroom's website registered 1 million unique users in December for the first time, according to Thirty Five Ventures CMO Sarah Flynn, and saw an average of 45% month-over-month growth throughout 2021. Video views tripled month over month during the same time period, and the site has 95,000 subscribers to its newsletter and a 35% average open rate. Boardroom has partnered with Weedmaps, Dapper Labs' NFT marketplace NBA Top Shot, Coinbase on crypto-related news and, most recently, FanDuel for sports betting content on the platform. Ketra Armstrong, professor of sport management and director of diversity, equity and inclusion for the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology, says Durant's combination of athletics and entrepreneurialism represents a "revolution" in the sports world. “I think we're going to see more and more athletes become renaissance men and women,” Armstrong says. "They're going to redefine what winning looks like. And I think we're going see more of the nontraditional investments, because athletes are starting to realize that their brand has value so much beyond the realm of sports.” Durant spoke with Adweek about how he and Kleiman built Thirty Five Ventures, how he got hip to cryptocurrency and when he started to contemplate life off the court. This interview has been condensed and edited. Adweek: How did you and Rich form Thirty Five Ventures?Kevin Durant: We started off as a standard player-agent relationship. Our personal relationship grew at the same time. We would always have conversations about where I wanted my career to go, where we wanted this partnership going in the future. We always wanted to be involved in tech, create stories around sports culture and hip-hop culture, and invest. We had so many ideas, and … 2015 is when we really formed Thirty Five Ventures and started to pour in all our resources and invest all our time into it. When your relationship first started, conversations were mainly about basketball. How did they evolve into business?When we’re talking about basketball, [the conversation] ventured off into so many different avenues. And we've always had questions on how the game works behind the scenes from an agent’s perspective, from a marketing perspective and player's perspective. We just wanted to tell our story but also be a source for people to come get that information as well. This stuff just built over time. Along the way, we sprinkled in a couple of ideas here and there to fine-tune. And that's what we are still doing. To keep growing, we're always brainstorming. Durant and his longtime manager, Rich Kleiman (r.), started Thirty Five Ventures in 2016 and sports business media network Boardroom in 2019. How did you build trust early in your relationship?Rich will tell you that he still feels like my manager—anything that I needed, from my phone bill to getting the house situated for my parents, he was on the phone there to help. He was also my therapist when I was going through stuff on the basketball court, in the house. Our relationship grew from that and just being somebody that I could depend on in life, in general, it made those conversations about business really easy. It was an organic relationship that grew over time. Was there anything you took away from your three years in Silicon Valley [playing for the Golden State Warriors from 2016 to 2019] that you still use today?We saw how all those companies formed, and we're trying to build a company on our own, and it's really about the team that you build and how you empower the people around you. In some of the best conversations that I had with my friends that I met in Silicon Valley, it was mainly just about life, more so than what we could do in business. We were able to gain a lot of knowledge and a lot of friendships that are going to last, and that’s what is helping us today. Coinbase has been an investment you've seen significant gains from, but there's always risk involved in investing in that field. What's it like trying to figure out what investments will work and dealing with potential successes or failures?You've just got to take that risk. I want to say 2017 is when I started to try to understand cryptocurrency, and Coinbase is one of the first apps that I got on to help me gain a knowledge of the industry. Sometimes you want to take that risk in something that you really believe in. The creators and people that help put it together—I believed in their vision as well, so it all came together perfectly. It's not like when we invested we knew for a fact that this was going to be as big as it is now, but just having that belief in the infrastructure. We kept our head down and kept working. Golden Opportunity Durant captured the sports world's attention on Independence Day in 2016 when he left the Oklahoma City Thunder and signed with the Golden State Warriors. On the court, Durant formed a superteam with Stephen Curry and won back-to-back championships in 2017 and 2018. But the move to California also led to Durant's awakening to the tech space, giving him exposure and access to entrepreneurs and startups right in his backyard. "Being in the Bay Area, playing for the Golden State Warriors and being around that network in Silicon Valley for three years really helped us and threw us in the fire, basically," Durant says. "We were learning along the way. The San Francisco area really taught us and put us in the right position to do what we're doing now." Durant has learned that building connections and relationships that go beyond business—making friends and having conversations about life or topics that have nothing to do with business—is an important part of making deals. Durant's success in building his portfolio is an embodiment of the popular saying "your network is your net worth." "As I started to get into it, I understood that networking and gaining knowledge will take you as far as you want to go," Durant says. "It was pretty simple. I always thought that it was this difficult formula to try to get into [investing]. But being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people, and just having genuine and organic conversations can lead to a lot." What were those conversations like, trying to understand cryptocurrency in its infancy in 2017?It was perfect timing. I had a few friends talking about it one night, and they were telling me how it's the future currency. It started to make sense when they broke it down to me and how everything is moving digitally as one universal currency, and it was interesting to get into and read the literature. It started to grow so fast. Especially with the pandemic, everybody was trying to understand it. It's still complicated, but it's just like anything: When it grows, it gets bigger and it hits the masses. So many competitors want to jump in there. It's a booming industry. It was cool to get in early and see the beginning stages. What was the thought process in creating Boardroom?We wanted to be an informative—I don't even want to call it a website because I feel like it's much bigger than that. We just wanted to inform people about what goes on behind the scenes in the sport. It first started with basketball, but then it just grew so big, so fast. We just try to touch every area of sport, and the quick facts are something that we all enjoy. [For example], learning how much Lionel Messi made on a contract—you knew that he made a lot of money, but you might not know the specifics. To provide that information along with different forms of content that spans across pop culture, technology, trading cards—we want to be a resource to people and continue to provide information. And we think that's the key. What do you envision for the future of Boardroom?Continue to build it out and invest in the ideas that we always love to do. It's hard to say now, because five years ago, I never thought it could be like this. We started off with something so small. So continue to keep adding and building the team out and empowering the people around us to come up with great ideas and see how far we can go. Franchise Players Durant has taken inspiration from some of his NBA predecessors, particularly those who've seen success beyond basketball. Michael Jordan: A six-time NBA champion and the NBA's undisputed GOAT, Jordan has created a lane in branding and business that is unparalleled in athletics. A subsidiary of Nike, the Jordan Brand generated $4.7 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2021. Jordan is also invested in sports data company Sportradar, sports betting and fantasy sports DraftKings and, like Durant, Dapper Labs. Isiah Thomas: A two-time champion with the Detroit Pistons, Thomas reimagined what NBA players could do off the court when he became part-owner of the expansion franchise Toronto Raptors in 1994 and stayed with the club for four years. The Hall of Famer announced a $3 million investment in hemp and cannabis ingredient producer One World Pharma Inc. through his investment holdings company, Isiah International LLC, last year. Jerry West: West, best known as the uncredited inspiration for the NBA logo, isn't a high-profile investor, having only put money into social shopping platform Wishclouds in 2014. But the former Lakers star found success as a front office leader. During his time as Lakers general manager and evp from 1982-2000, West helped the franchise win six NBA championships. He’s also had executive roles with the Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers. Magic Johnson: A five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers, Johnson started Magic Johnson Enterprises in 1987. Johnson offered $100 million in loans to minority- and women-owned companies struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic through his EquiTrust Life Insurance Co. The former MVP put up $50 million in Guggenheim Baseball Management's $2.15 billion purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012. How do you separate yourself from your competitors in the media landscape?Well, it's always focusing on us and knowing what works for us and building up our infrastructure first. We've reached 1 million monthly unique visitors for Boardroom. We always say that it may take a little longer for us if we're going to build this from the ground up, but we got a certain audience that likes to subscribe to what we do. If we keep building that up, slowly but surely, we'll see where we go from there. Growing up, did you ever think of business as an important focus when starting your NBA career?Growing up, I cared nothing about anything but playing basketball. I'm not even going to sugarcoat it. That was my main focus. But as I started to get older, you see guys like Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson, so many other names, that have capitalized on NBA careers and switched careers once they retire. I always tried to study those paths. When you get into the league, they always pump you with: "Start thinking about what you want to do when you're done playing." It doesn't really hit you until you're 10 to 12 years in the league and you are on the second leg of your career, and you start to realize that life is totally different when you're out of the NBA, especially when you've been conditioned to be a part of it for so long. Following so many great players in this league, you start to see what they invest in and how they handle their money when they're done playing, the people that they network with and relationships they build. I just tried to do that for myself but also have conversations with some of these guys that have been in these positions as well. It's a gradual thing for me, and that's how I started to understand what I'd like to do, what fits me and suits me and Rich. We sit and call each other randomly about ideas, and that's the best way for me, I feel, to operate. To hear more about Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's business ventures, join Adweek at our Challenger Brands summit, a virtual Brandweek event that runs Feb. 22-24. Durant and Kleiman will be speaking on the main stage on Feb. 24.

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Kevin Durant Is Showing Everyone How Business-Savvy Athletes Can Fuel Innovation

With ventures spanning tech and media, the NBA All-Star captain and entrepreneur is a competitor beyond basketball

Rafael Canton

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Rafael Canton