For nearly two decades, Andre Iguodala established a reputation as one of the N.B.A.’s most versatile players, an All-Star and Olympic gold medalist who racked up four championships with the Golden State Warriors.
Now, Iguodala has told DealBook exclusively that he is retiring from pro basketball to focus on his other career: start-up investor. He will run Mosaic, a $200 million venture capital fund that he just raised with his longtime business partner, Rudy Cline-Thomas.
Iguodala’s disclosure ends years of speculation. The 39-year-old had suggested that last year’s season would be his last, only to shoot down rumors about it earlier this year. But now is the time to hang up his sneakers. “It’s been a blessing to play for that long,” he told DealBook. (He hasn’t fully come to grips with it yet: “I don’t know if it’s actually hit me yet,” he said.)
He’s embracing his next act. Though he and Cline-Thomas had begun buying tech stocks in 2010, the two dived deeply into start-ups when he joined the Warriors in 2013. “When I initially went out to the Bay Area, it was my intent to have success on and off the court,” Iguodala said. “I thought about how to get access.”
That led to meetings with venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, and then to taking stakes in start-ups, including Zoom and the cybersecurity provider Cloudflare.
It is a model now followed by many pro athletes, from the N.F.L.’s Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers to Iguodala’s longtime Warriors teammate Steph Curry. “Athletes are becoming smarter and smarter,” Iguodala said, asserting that their competitiveness and an ability to speak to audiences help to sell and scale products.
Mosaic is now his focus. The firm will home in on seed- and early-stage investments in enterprise software, fintech health care and sports companies. Iguodala and Cline-Thomas closed Mosaic’s first fund — whose investors included endowments, institutions and founders of companies they have already backed — in May.
Mosaic’s investments include Vessel, a builder of modular multifamily homes, and Athletes First, an N.F.L. talent agency and management firm.
Sports franchise ownership is another focus. Iguodala is a co-owner of Leeds United, an English soccer club; Bay Area F.C., the National Women’s Soccer League team; and, along with former teammates Curry and Klay Thompson, the San Francisco branch of TGL, the upstart golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Iguodala’s highest aspiration? Owning an N.B.A. team. “The timing has to be right,” he said, but “that’s definitely the ultimate goal.”
If I'm starting a business, I WANT IGUODALA
Can you explain me?
Kellerman clip is hilarious, but in all seriousness it reminds me of a moment back in 2010 when Iguodala, Josh Smith and Russell Westbrook were on Fox Business to promote NBA2K11.
I can’t find the exact clip, but the host tried to ambush them by talking about how much their capital gains taxes are going up, all to try to get them to criticize Obama. But Iguodala is no dummy, he was ready.
(Paraphrasing): “You all say you like Obama, but under his tax plan guys like you will have to pay 50% in capital gains taxes. Isn’t that crazy!”
Iguodala: “That’s only if you sell within a year.”
Dude has always been prepared.
He’s a little bit of an ass but he’s a smart ass dude. Talks about this stuff semi frequently on his podcast
Why does that article have a fan fic about players grilling Rick Santorum later on in it?
Funnest fact: sex advice columnist Dan Savage got the word “Santorum” to the top of Google search results as a neologism meaning “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex” in 2003.