Serena Williams' Serena Ventures raises $111M in inaugural fund

Serena Williams said that her early-stage venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, "has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million that will invest in founders with diverse points of view," according to Andrew Ross Sorkin of the N.Y. TIMES. The firm, which will invest in pre-seed through Series A rounds, is "already an active angel investor with a portfolio of 60 companies that include SendWave, MasterClass and Daily Harvest." Williams has been investing "for nine years." Williams was "inspired by a talk" between Clear CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Onstage at an event, Seidman-Beckert said that "less than 2 percent of venture money goes to women." The founding partners of Serena Ventures are Williams and Alison Rapaport Stillman, who previously worked at JPMorgan Chase, Wasserman and Melo7 Tech. The fund's limited partners include "Norwest, Capital G (Alphabet's growth fund) and LionTree" (DEALBOOK, 3/1).