Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant spoke about his tech investments during the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 in San Francisco. (Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch)
Kevin Durant, the Golden State Warriors star and NBA Finals MVP, said he began investing in tech companies while playing in Oklahoma City before adding, “But if you come out here, it’s obvious that you’ll be just entrenched in this community.”
The soon-to-be 29-year-old has pocketed about $132 million in career NBA salary, not to mention his lucrative endorsements which Forbes estimated to be $36 million just for the past season. Durant has joined teammates like Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala as Silicon Valley investors, with stakes in companies such as Postmates, Rubrik, Acorns and The Players Tribune.
“Guys want to be a part of change, and I think that’s a great thing, to think outside of the basketball realm and try to impact some people’s lives in a different way,” Durant said, speaking at TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF event on Tuesday, alongside his agent and business partner, Rich Kleiman.
Durant used the opportunity to take accountability for some ill-advised tweets late Sunday night bashing his former coach, Billy Donovan, and his former teammates other than Russell Westbrook. His use of the third person in the since-deleted tweets led many to infer that Durant has an anonymous second account; Durant did not address the rampant hypothesis of his multiple accounts but did take ownership for the messages.
“I went a little too far,” he said. “I don’t regret clapping back at anybody or talking to my fans on Twitter. I do regret using my former coach’s name and the former organization that I played for. That was childish. That was idiotic, all those types of words. I apologize for that.”
Once that topic was addressed, Durant and Kleiman expounded upon their investing philosophy at The Durant Company and the genesis of Thirty Five Media. Kleiman said their greatest asset at the outset was an understanding of what they didn’t know along with confidence they could identify great ideas and first-rate executive teams. The Durant Company has since backed about 30 companies, Kleiman said, with its early focus on angel investing, putting in $50,000 to $250,000 per share, before moving to Series A rounds at $250,000 to $2 million per pop.
“I know, coming into this environment, that I’m not the smartest, I’m not the best, I’m the strongest — just yet,” Durant said. “But I’m learning, and I continue to grow. That’s the same approach that I took as a growing basketball player. If I have that approach in this life, I know it can grow into something huge.”
Kleiman stressed that the whole enterprise is only possible if Durant is focused on playing basketball, so he tends to vet early deals before bringing them to his partner’s attention.
“If I can’t, in one sentence, explain the company and get the reaction out of him where his eyes open up and he wants to meet them, that’s usually a ‘no’ for me,” Kleiman said.
Thirty Five Media, meanwhile, arose from Durant’s interest in having more control about what telling his own story. Five months after his YouTube welcome message, he has more than 417,000 subscribers and a burgeoning platform.
“We didn’t have any plans of starting our own media company, but once we saw the reaction to our YouTube page, we tried to hit the ground running and tried to build this thing up,” he said.
The final question posed to Durant was asked of Curry last year. Given the advances of machine learning and artificial intelligence, would he want to see robot referees some day? Curry joked that he would, saying, “I would love that. But I would have to throw my mouthpiece at those new inventions.”
Durant demurred, saying with a smile, “I’d rather keep it at the human judgement. I feel as though they’re doing a great job anyway. If you get AI refs, they’d call every touch foul and I get away with a lot.”
