The newspaper told me how much I made and I couldn’t believe
During his 19-year career, Shaquille O’Neal He earned approximately $292 million from contracts alone. While this was more than enough money to live comfortably, it didn’t stop there; The NBA legend became interested in business at an early age and strategically used his money to secure his future after retirement.
He has since become one of the world’s top athlete investors; One of his many ventures was his investment in Google in the early years of its development in 1999.
Years later, he humorously admitted that he had completely forgotten about his $250,000 investment; Until he was reminded of this when Google’s value skyrocketed.
“The newspaper told me how much I earned, I couldn’t believe how much I earned“O’Neal in question.
At this point, O’Neal still wasn’t fully invested in building his fortune through out-of-court ventures, and the story of how he learned about Google reflects this perfectly.
“I was at the Four Seasons, having lunch, and there were four distinguished gentlemen sitting there playing with their kids, and the kids recognized me and they were playing with me. Basically, I do a babysitting job, and a gentleman says, ‘I want to talk about a company called Google,’ and he was just talking about search engines, he said, ‘You’ll be able to type anything,’ and I said, ‘That sounds good.’.‘ We had a meeting with them and it seemed fine, I put in some money and forgot,” he said.
O’Neal eventually met with the men and decided to invest his money in the company. After being reminded in the newspaper of Google’s exponential growth and success from which he himself benefited, the legendary tycoon immediately began to regret not investing more money.
Based on a reported $250,000 figure that the 1999-00 MVP invested in one of the largest companies ever, that figure is said to have jumped to $16.5 million, but this has never been confirmed.
Shaq should be a source of inspiration not only for an athlete looking to get into business, but for every potential investor. This is backed by his large portfolio of various investments, including numerous restaurants and fast food chains such as Krispy Kreme, Papa John’s, Auntie Anne’s, and 155 Five Guys locations, which he at one point sold in 2016. He also became one of the founders of the Big Chicken chain.
O’Neal invested in Google as well as other tech companies like Ring before it was acquired by Amazon. He also invested in another technology giant, Apple.
