Thirty Five Ventures: How Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman Turned Superstar Influence into an Investment, Media, and Sports Asset Empire

1. The first thing to understand about Thirty Five Ventures is that it is not simply a conventional VC fund. It is better understood as the central operating system for Kevin Durant’s capital and business interests.

Thirty Five Ventures, generally branded as 35V, currently describes itself as the family office of Kevin Durant. As of September 2026, its official website says it houses investments in more than 100 startups, Durant’s personal brand and business deals, and the Durant Family Foundation. It also describes 35V and Boardroom as sister companies.

That distinction matters. Earlier media coverage frequently called 35V a venture company, media-and-investment company, or business empire. A more precise current interpretation is that 35V serves as the central coordinating platform linking Durant’s private capital, startup equity, brand monetization, sports assets, real estate and philanthropy. Rich Kleiman is the principal operator who helps convert Durant’s celebrity influence into organizations, transactions and long-term assets.

There is a discrepancy over when the organization was founded. An SEC filing for Infinite Acquisition Corp. explicitly says Durant and Kleiman founded Thirty Five Ventures in 2016, and Gotham FC’s official biography of Kleiman also gives 2016. ESPN wrote in 2019 that it was founded in 2013, while Philadelphia Union’s current Durant biography gives 2017.

The founding thesis was unusually explicit. SEC disclosures state that Durant and Kleiman believed the access, global reach and influence of an NBA superstar could create opportunities far beyond conventional endorsements. In other words, 35V was built to turn celebrity access into an asset.

2. Kevin Durant’s background helps explain two recurring themes in 35V: the pursuit of generational wealth and the repeated reinvestment in his home community.

Kevin Wayne Durant was born on September 29, 1988, in Washington, D.C., to Wayne Pratt and Wanda Durant/Pratt. University of Texas records confirm the birth information, while extensive reporting places his upbringing primarily in Prince George’s County, Maryland, outside Washington.

Durant did not grow up in a finance, entertainment or business dynasty. The Washington Post reported that his family moved among communities including Capitol Heights, Suitland and Seat Pleasant, while Wanda worked overnight shifts for the U.S. Postal Service. Because of her schedule, Durant spent substantial time with his grandmother, Barbara Davis. Public evidence therefore depicts a working-family resource structure rather than one in which capital or elite business networks were readily available.

Wayne Pratt was absent for much of Durant’s early childhood and later re-entered his life, eventually becoming involved in basketball travel and some major career decisions. Wanda became one of the central figures in Durant’s public story, most famously through his 2014 NBA MVP speech and the subsequent “Real MVP” narrative.

Basketball was the main mechanism through which Durant moved from limited economic resources into a much broader social and institutional network. A particularly important influence was youth coach Charles Craig. Durant wore No. 35 in Craig’s memory because Craig died at age 35. The number later became one of the most recognizable symbols attached to Durant’s commercial identity.

This helps explain a recurring pattern in Durant’s later investing: financial returns are often intertwined with place and identity. 35V invested in commercial real estate in Suitland; the Durant Family Foundation established major education initiatives in Prince George’s County; and in 2026, 35V and TPA Group acquired the 515-acre former Six Flags America property in the same county.

3. Durant’s formal higher education was brief, but professional basketball became his gateway into a global commercial education.

Durant attended elite high-school basketball programs including Oak Hill Academy and Montrose Christian before entering the University of Texas in 2006. He played only the 2006–07 season before declaring for the 2007 NBA Draft, where Seattle selected him second overall.

His single Texas season was extraordinary: he became one of the most decorated freshmen in college-basketball history. But he chose professional basketball rather than the conventional four-year college path. As a result, Durant’s later commercial education came less from academic finance and more from the NBA, endorsements, representation and eventually Silicon Valley.

Among the most important business influences were technology investors and founders. After moving to the Bay Area, Durant gained exposure to figures such as Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway and Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Lyons, as well as a broader network of technology entrepreneurs.

His development as an investor therefore resembles an apprenticeship: rather than studying investing abstractly and then entering markets, he deliberately positioned himself inside dense networks of founders, venture investors and deals.

4. Rich Kleiman is the other indispensable half of the 35V story. He is not a conventional MBA, banker or venture capitalist; he came through New York street-level entrepreneurship, music management and the Jay-Z ecosystem.

Kleiman grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. A detailed Forbes profile describes how, at eight or nine years old, he was already fascinated by shop owners and office workers, sold GI Joes, wrestling figures, baseball cards and stickers, and resold signed Knicks programs. He later said New York exposed him simultaneously to wealth and poverty and taught him to pay close attention to how money, status and business worked.

His parents divorced when he was in eighth grade, after which he struggled with structure and focus in school. Details of his parents’ occupations and complete family financial circumstances are 公开资料有限 / 说法不一 / 暂无法确认. What is clear is that Kleiman himself has identified family instability and New York’s economic intensity as formative influences.

He hoped to play college basketball, but Cornell rejected him on academic grounds and a possible Lafayette opportunity did not materialize. He enrolled at Boston University but left without recording a credit. He later attended Boston College night school. Forbes reports that during that period he would sit in class reconciling figures from a bookmaking operation he was running. The article does not report criminal charges connected to that activity, so it should be treated as part of his unconventional early history rather than as evidence of later illegal conduct.

His first major entrepreneurial experiment came during the dot-com boom. With a group that included future Acorns CEO Noah Kerner and future Stocktwits CEO Rishi Khanna, Kleiman participated in the hip-hop site onelevel.com. The venture raised several million dollars and assembled advisers including Robert De Niro, Q-Tip and Heavy D, but ultimately failed. Even in failure, it revealed what would become Kleiman’s most important skill: connecting people from unrelated worlds around a common project.

Around 2000 he became a music supervisor at Radical Media, learned the mechanics of music licensing and publishing, managed Mark Ronson, helped build a Soho studio used by artists including Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, J. Cole and Wale, and participated in Jay-Z’s Fade to Black documentary.

He later joined Roc Nation, managing artists including Ronson, Wale, Meek Mill, Solange and D-Nice. When Roc Nation Sports launched in 2013, Kleiman moved into sports as a vice president, working with athletes such as Victor Cruz, CC Sabathia, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Robinson Canó. He later described this transition as the moment he finally recognized his true professional calling.

Kleiman met Durant early in Durant’s NBA career, but the relationship became institutionalized after Durant joined Roc Nation in 2013. Kleiman became his longtime manager and principal business partner. Kleiman later said they quickly saw that Durant could follow the emerging model associated with figures such as Jay-Z and LeBron James: instead of merely serving as a spokesperson for other people’s businesses, build an enterprise around the star himself.

That is the intellectual origin of 35V.

Company, Assets, and Capital Network

5. 35V did not evolve by simply “raising a venture fund.” It gradually placed nearly every value-producing dimension of Durant’s career into a coordinated organization.

The clearest chronology is as follows.

In 2013, Kleiman became a central figure in Durant’s business management, while the Durant Family Foundation developed into a more formal institutional platform.

In 2016, Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors and, according to SEC filings, Durant and Kleiman formally launched 35V. That coincidence would shape the following decade. Durant did not merely change NBA teams; he moved from Oklahoma City into one of the densest venture-capital ecosystems in the world.

From 2016 through 2019, the pair immersed themselves in Silicon Valley. SEC documents identify this period as the source of relationships that led to investments including Postmates, Acorns, Whoop, Overtime, Caffeine, Robinhood and Coinbase. By a 2017 TechCrunch interview, their investment operation had already made roughly 30 investments.

During 2018–2019, media evolved from celebrity content into an independent operating platform. ESPN introduced The Boardroom, and Boardroom then developed in 2019 into a dedicated sports-business media network.

In 2020, Durant acquired an initial 5% stake in Philadelphia Union with an option to buy another 5%. The relationship was explicitly designed to involve 35V in marketing, business development and community activity rather than merely passive ownership. Whether the additional 5% option was fully exercised is 公开资料有限 / 说法不一 / 暂无法确认.

In 2021, the film operation gained cultural prestige when Two Distant Strangers won an Academy Award. The same year, 35V and LionTree created Infinite Acquisition Corp., a SPAC intended to scale their deal-sourcing capabilities into public markets.

From 2022 onward, sports ownership became much more important. 35V joined Gotham FC’s ownership group and bought a Major League Pickleball expansion franchise, while Durant and Kleiman also entered additional emerging sports properties.

In 2025, those sports holdings became increasingly associated with Boardroom Sports Holdings. Through that platform, Durant reached an agreement with QSI that made him a direct minority shareholder in Paris Saint-Germain.

In 2026, 35V and TPA Group acquired the 515-acre former Six Flags America property in Maryland, while Boardroom signed a broad partnership with Amazon-owned Wondery covering distribution, advertising and live-event opportunities. By this point, the Durant–Kleiman strategy had expanded far beyond angel investing and digital media into sports ownership, large-scale real estate, in-person experiences and institutional distribution.

6. The assets and platforms associated with the Durant–35V ecosystem can be understood in five layers.

The first layer is startup equity.

35V currently says it has invested in more than 100 companies across fintech, AI, health and wellness, media and other categories. Publicly identified portfolio companies have included Coinbase, Postmates, Robinhood, Acorns, Whoop, Overtime, Dapper Labs, OpenSea, SeatGeek and Therabody.

These are genuine financial assets because Durant/35V participate in enterprise-value appreciation through equity. However, investment amounts, ownership percentages, dilution, realized exits and actual IRRs are undisclosed for most positions, so increases in a portfolio company’s headline valuation should never automatically be treated as cash profits realized by Durant.

The second layer is sports ownership.

Philadelphia Union is the clearest position for which an original ownership percentage is public: 5% in 2020. Gotham FC’s percentage is undisclosed. The Major League Pickleball position has undergone team-name and structural changes, while the current 35V site identifies the D.C. Pickleball Team among affiliated sports investments. In 2025 Durant became a direct minority shareholder in PSG through Boardroom Sports Holdings.

These assets operate differently from startup investments. A professional sports franchise can appreciate financially while also generating sponsorship opportunities, content, events, community influence and valuable business relationships.

The third layer is media and intellectual property.

Boardroom is the central platform. Its current official positioning covers video, audio, editorial products, newsletters, B2B experiences, the Game Plan conference, advisory services and a Members Club. Film and television projects include Two Distant Strangers, Swagger and NYC Point Gods.

The fourth layer is real estate and physical venues.

The SEC disclosed a 35V investment in a commercial building in Suitland, Maryland. The 2026 acquisition with TPA Group of the roughly 515-acre former Six Flags America property represents a much larger move from light-asset startup ownership into land development and destination economics. The acquisition price and 35V’s exact ownership percentage have not been disclosed.

The fifth layer is influence capital.

Durant himself remains the least replicable asset in the entire structure: elite basketball credibility, international recognition, brand power, direct relationships with athletes and founders, and the ability to gain access to deals, teams and partners that would be unavailable to an ordinary small investment office.

The real moat is therefore not simply a portfolio list. It is the combination of capital, Kevin Durant’s attention-distribution power and Rich Kleiman’s transaction-building capability. That is essentially the thesis stated in 35V’s SEC disclosures.

7. There is no publicly established traditional LP structure behind 35V comparable to a conventional venture fund. Its real resource base appears to be flexible capital, co-investment relationships and elite networks.

The company now explicitly calls itself Durant’s family office rather than a conventional VC fund. When TechCrunch asked Durant and Kleiman in 2017 about outside LPs, they declined to confirm whether outside investors participated. They preferred to describe the operation as a flexible investment vehicle rather than a standard venture fund.

The more important form of capital infrastructure is a network of long-term co-investors and partners.

In technology, that includes Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, the Andreessen Horowitz ecosystem and many founders. Durant has explicitly discussed how living in the Bay Area dramatically improved access to startup deal flow.

In finance and media, LionTree became one of the most formal institutional relationships. Infinite Acquisition Corp.’s sponsor was owned 50/50 by 35V and LionTree. LionTree contributed M&A, institutional-investor and capital-markets relationships, while 35V contributed sports, culture, celebrity and consumer access.

In sports, the network includes the Philadelphia Union ownership group, Gotham FC, Major League Pickleball, Qatar Sports Investments, Arctos and other emerging sports properties. The PSG relationship is particularly revealing because equity ownership was bundled with merchandise, content, international strategy, community initiatives and possible basketball development.

In real estate, TPA Group has become a major partner through the 515-acre Maryland project.

In education and philanthropy, the Durant Family Foundation partnered with College Track, associated with Laurene Powell Jobs, on a 10-year, $10 million Durant Center initiative.

Thus, 35V’s resource system is not adequately explained by asking who “funded 35V.” Its advantage is the ability to move between venture capital, private equity, investment banking, technology, professional sports, media, real estate and philanthropy.

8. Durant and Kleiman occupy deliberately different positions in this structure, and that asymmetry is one of the reasons it works.

Durant is the scarce asset, strategic center, major source of brand leverage, investment participant and one source of capital.

A current partner biography describes him as 35V’s co-founder and president, while 35V itself calls the organization his family office. The present structure therefore looks increasingly like an institutional extension of Durant’s private capital rather than a loose collection of joint side projects.

Kleiman is the operator, manager, transaction architect, network connector and institution builder.

He does not possess Durant’s globally scarce athletic identity, but he can translate across music, entertainment, athlete representation, startup founders and capital markets. CNBC currently identifies him as Boardroom’s CEO and co-founder while also noting his role as Durant’s longtime manager and 35V co-founder.

One of the most revealing points in the Forbes profile is Kleiman’s own recognition that he was not the world-class creative talent represented by people such as Jay-Z, Mark Ronson or Durant. His skill was instead being a highly effective complementary operator around such people.

The 35V operating model can therefore be reduced to a powerful division of labor:

Durant supplies scarce talent, capital, attention, brand value and credibility; Kleiman converts those resources into relationships, organizations, media, equity positions and transactions.

Business Model, Outcomes, Controversies, and Current Position

9. 35V’s economic model is fundamentally about converting one-time celebrity income into long-duration ownership.

The traditional celebrity model is simple: a company pays cash and the athlete supplies image rights, promotion and visibility.

35V’s logic is different. If Durant’s brand can help a company gain customers, capital, media attention and credibility, then Durant should seek equity, ownership, intellectual property and long-term participation, rather than only a one-time endorsement fee.

The first economic engine remains Durant’s personal commercial activity. The official 35V site still explicitly says it houses “KD’s personal brand and business deals.”

The second is startup equity appreciation and exits. Forbes reported that Durant invested roughly $1 million in Postmates around 2016; in the context of Uber’s later acquisition, his position was estimated at one point to be worth about $15 million. That figure was a media estimate rather than an audited 35V disclosure, but it illustrates why equity can be far more powerful than a normal endorsement payment.

The third engine is media monetization.

Boardroom can derive value from advertising, sponsorship, licensing, video and audio distribution, events, conferences, advisory work, memberships and affiliate commerce. Its website provides a dedicated advertising-sales channel and states that it can receive affiliate commissions from purchases made through certain product links. Its events and ticketed conferences add both B2B and experiential economics.

The 2026 Amazon/Wondery agreement demonstrates the next stage. Beginning in 2027, Wondery is set to obtain exclusive distribution and ad-sales rights for parts of Boardroom’s digital and podcast slate across Amazon platforms including Prime Video, Amazon Music and Fire TV, while also participating in advertising around branded live events and Durant-related Twitch programming.

The fourth engine is sports-asset appreciation plus strategic commercial integration.

After acquiring franchise equity, the ecosystem does not simply wait for valuations to increase. It can participate in marketing, content, sponsorship and market expansion. The Philadelphia Union transaction explicitly rejected the idea of purely passive ownership; the PSG partnership similarly combines equity with merchandise, media, U.S. strategy and broader business development.

The fifth engine is real estate and physical experiences.

The Suitland property and the 515-acre former Six Flags America site indicate that 35V is beginning to combine Durant’s hometown identity, sports-and-entertainment expertise and partner network with long-duration physical assets.

The sixth engine is film and IP.

Film and television can create production economics and long-term intellectual-property value while shifting Durant from being merely the subject of media to being an owner and producer of narratives.

The Durant Family Foundation should not be classified as a revenue engine. It is a philanthropic institution whose principal value lies in social impact, educational opportunity and Durant’s long-term institutional legacy.

10. Of all the major decisions, Durant’s 2016 move to the Warriors was simultaneously one of the most controversial basketball choices of his career and one of the most consequential business moves.

From a basketball perspective, the decision generated lasting criticism because Durant joined a Golden State team that had just produced a historically dominant regular season. Debate about how that affects the perceived value of his championships remains part of his public legacy.

From a business perspective, however, moving to the Bay Area functioned almost like geographic arbitrage.

Durant and Kleiman explained to TechCrunch that living around San Francisco meant entrepreneurs and investors naturally appeared at Warriors games and in their social environment. Companies that would rarely have entered their orbit in Oklahoma City suddenly became part of their deal flow. The SEC later cited their 2016–2019 Silicon Valley immersion as a major source of investments such as Coinbase, Robinhood, Whoop and Postmates.

A second critical decision was turning Kleiman from a representative into a permanent business partner around 2013.

That solved one of the fundamental problems in celebrity business: an athlete cannot personally operate dozens of investments and projects while competing professionally. Kleiman provided continuity while Durant remained the strategic and brand center.

A third was moving from investing in media businesses to owning a distribution platform through Boardroom.

That meant 35V was no longer only a capital provider. Portfolio companies, sports teams, athletes, executives and brands could become Boardroom content or event participants, while Boardroom could reinforce 35V’s relationships and deal flow.

A fourth turning point was sports ownership.

Philadelphia Union, Gotham, pickleball and PSG show an increasing willingness to treat leagues and teams themselves as investable assets rather than merely markets in which athletes sell sponsorships.

A fifth was large-scale real estate and destination development.

The 515-acre Maryland project in 2026 suggests that 35V is approaching the full form of a mature family office: startup equity, operating companies, sports assets, IP, real estate and philanthropy can all coexist.

11. 35V’s greatest achievement is not simply identifying a few winning startups; it is demonstrating that an athlete can become an institutional capital allocator.

Postmates, Coinbase, Robinhood and Whoop helped establish the early investment reputation. By the time Forbes profiled Durant’s business activity in 2019, he had put more than $15 million into over 40 startups. By 2021, the number of venture investments had passed 70. Today, 35V officially reports more than 100.

Whoop illustrates the long-horizon model. Reporting in 2026 said the company’s latest funding valued it at roughly $10.1 billion, compared with about $125 million around the time Durant first invested. The frequently cited “81x” figure is therefore a company-valuation multiple, not evidence that Durant has personally realized 81 times his cash investment, because the size of his stake, dilution and eventual sale price remain undisclosed.

As of late August 2026, Hugging Face could become another extraordinary case. Reuters, citing The Information, reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Hugging Face for roughly $12.9 billion, though neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face had publicly confirmed the transaction. Barron’s subsequently estimated that an approximately $250,000 early Durant/35V investment could correspond to roughly $60 million of value. As of September 2, 2026, the rigorous interpretation is therefore that this represents a potentially exceptional implied paper return, not a confirmed $60 million realized cash exit.

In media, the Academy Award for Two Distant Strangers became the clearest symbol that the organization could operate credibly in high-end entertainment production as well as finance.

In sports ownership, Durant’s direct minority stake in PSG moved him into another category entirely: an active American basketball superstar had become an equity owner and strategic commercial partner of one of Europe’s most prominent football clubs.

The broader industry significance is the pathway that 35V helped normalize:

endorser → angel investor → media owner → team owner → family-office allocator.

Professional-sports earnings become not merely money to spend or conservatively save, but seed capital for an intergenerational ownership structure.

12. The failures and controversies matter as well. 35V is not a story in which every investment or project succeeds.

The clearest institutional failure is Infinite Acquisition Corp.

In 2021, 35V and LionTree created a SPAC with a 50/50 sponsor structure, with Durant and Kleiman serving as co-CEOs. The IPO ultimately generated approximately $276 million in gross proceeds and sought a technology-enabled target in sports, health, wellness, food, commerce or culture.

The vehicle failed to complete a business combination within its required period. In October 2023 it announced that it would redeem public shares, cease NYSE trading and wind down. In practical terms, 35V’s most formal attempt to scale its investment sourcing into the public-market SPAC structure did not produce an acquisition.

That was not a fraud scandal; it was a genuine execution failure.

Kleiman’s earlier onelevel.com was another failed venture. It raised millions and attracted celebrity advisers but never became a sustainable operating company. Yet it also became a bridge into Radical Media, the music industry and ultimately the network that led toward Roc Nation.

Boardroom has also encountered business-model pressure.

In February 2026, reports said Boardroom had eliminated its full-time editorial staff. Kleiman/company messaging characterized the change as affecting three writing roles and said the next phase would focus more heavily on original video, experiential events and the Members Club. Whatever terminology is used, the shift indicates a move away from reliance on conventional digital editorial publishing and toward higher-value video, experiences, membership and network-based products.

This can be read as strategic evolution, but it also illustrates the difficult economics of standalone digital editorial media.

Durant himself has generated reputational risk. In 2021, after private social-media messages between Durant and actor Michael Rapaport became public, the NBA fined Durant $50,000 for offensive and derogatory language; the released messages included homophobic and misogynistic language. Durant apologized.

Durant’s tendency to engage critics directly on social media strengthens a perception of authenticity but also creates recurring brand risk. A new alleged burner-account controversy emerged in 2026, but ownership of the account was not definitively established and therefore should not be treated as confirmed fact.

The larger investment risk is structural. A portfolio of more than 100 startups necessarily contains failures, markdowns, dilution and illiquidity. Media coverage naturally highlights winners such as Coinbase, Postmates, Whoop and Hugging Face, while 35V has never published a full audited portfolio return, DPI, TVPI or realized/unrealized performance breakdown.

13. As of September 2026, 35V occupies a fairly distinctive position: it is not a top-tier global VC firm in the conventional sense, but it is one of the more developed examples of an athlete-led capital platform.

Durant remains an active NBA player with the Houston Rockets and agreed to a two-year contract extension worth roughly $90 million in 2025. That preserves one of 35V’s most unusual advantages: its central brand asset is not a retired legend but an active superstar who continues to receive enormous global sports exposure.

Kleiman, meanwhile, has completed a remarkable progression from music manager to Roc Nation executive, sports manager, entrepreneur, investor and media CEO. His most important contribution today is no longer simply negotiating an endorsement for Durant; it is maintaining the institutional machinery around the entire Durant business ecosystem.

35V’s current official structure reflects a genuine family-office mentality: more than 100 startup investments, Durant’s personal commercial deals and philanthropy at the core, linked outward to Boardroom and a growing collection of sports assets.

Two developments in 2026 are especially revealing.

The first is the 515-acre Maryland redevelopment. It combines Durant’s hometown identity with physical assets, sports-and-entertainment expertise and long-horizon urban development.

The second is the Boardroom–Amazon/Wondery partnership. Boardroom’s reduction in editorial staffing did not signal an exit from media. Instead, it appears to be shifting its center of gravity toward video/audio distribution, advertising, live events and premium community products.

The most accurate way to understand 35V, therefore, is not simply as “Kevin Durant’s VC firm.”

It is better understood as:

a long-duration family office that begins with the cash flow and influence generated by an elite athlete’s career, uses a professional operating partner to institutionalize those resources, and progressively converts celebrity influence into startup equity, media IP, sports ownership, real estate, commercial networks and social capital.

Durant is the system’s scarce asset and capital center. Kleiman is its organizer and converter. Boardroom is its media and relationship interface. Venture investments provide financial upside. Sports teams and real estate increasingly provide long-duration hard assets. The Durant Family Foundation channels part of the resulting influence back into communities and education.

That is ultimately why Thirty Five Ventures is worth studying. It does not merely answer the question, “How can a famous athlete earn more endorsement income?”

It addresses a much larger one:

Once an athlete possesses world-class attention, how can that temporary period of peak fame be transformed into an ownership structure capable of surviving for decades after the playing career ends?