During his 19-year career, Shaquille O’Neal earned an estimated $292 million from contracts alone. Although this is more than enough money to live comfortably, he didn’t stop there; The NBA legend took an early interest in the business world and used his money strategically to secure his future after retirement.
He has since become one of the top sports investors in the world, with one of his many ventures being an investment in Google in its early years in 1999.
Years later, he humorously admitted that he had completely forgotten about his $250,000 investment — until he was reminded of it when Google’s value skyrocketed.
“The paper told me how much I made and I couldn’t believe how much I made” O’Neal said.
At the time, O’Neal still wasn’t fully invested in building his fortune in non-judicial ventures, which is perfectly illustrated by the story of how he learned about Google.
“I was at the Four Seasons and I was having lunch and there were four nice gentlemen sitting there playing with their children and the children recognized me and were playing with me. Basically, I’m working as a babysitter, and a gentleman says, “I want to talk about this company called Google,” and I was just talking about search engines, saying, “You can type in anything..We had a meeting with them and it looked good, I put some money in and forgot about it,” he said.
O’Neal eventually met with the guys and decided to invest his money in the company. Reminded of Google’s exponential growth and success in the newspaper, the legendary grandfather instantly regretted not investing more money.
Based on the reported figure of $250,000 that 1999-2000 MVP has invested in one of the largest companies of all time, said to have grown to a whopping $16.5 million. USD, but this was never confirmed.
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Shaq should be an inspiration to every potential investor, not just an athlete looking to get into business. That’s because of his broad portfolio of diverse investments, including numerous restaurant and fast-food chains such as Krispy Kreme, Papa John’s, Auntie Anne’s and at one point 155 Five Guys locations, which he sold in 2016. He was also the founder of the Big Chicken chain.
In addition to Google, O’Neal invested in other tech companies, such as Ring, before it was acquired by Amazon. He also invested in another tech giant, Apple.