Over the course of his 19-year career, Shaquille O’Neal has earned approximately $292 million from contracts alone. Although the money was enough for him 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.
Since then, he has become one of the world’s best sports investors, one of his many investments being an investment in Google in its early days in 1999.
Years later, he humorously admitted that he had completely forgotten about his $250,000 investment—until Google’s value soared.
“The newspapers told me how much money I made and I couldn’t believe how much I made“O’Neill said.
At the time, O’Neal wasn’t fully committed to building wealth through off-market ventures — and the story of how he discovered Google reflects that perfectly.
“I was at the Four Seasons, and I was having lunch, and there were four amazing gentlemen sitting there playing with their kids, and the kids recognized me and they were playing with me. Basically, I was doing a babysitting job and one of the gentlemen said, ‘I want to talk about this company called Google,’ and he was just talking about search engines and said, ‘You can type in anything,’ and I was like, ‘That sounds great..‘We had a meeting with them, it looked good, I put some money in and then I forgot about it,” he said.
O’Neill eventually met with the men and decided to invest his money in the company. After being reminded in the newspapers to capitalize on Google’s exponential growth and success, the legendary mogul immediately began to regret not investing more money.
The 1999-00 MVP reportedly invested $250,000 in one of the largest companies ever, a figure that was said to have ballooned to a whopping $16.5 million, but this has never been confirmed.
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Shaq should be an inspiration to every potential investor, not just an athlete looking to get into business. The reason behind this is his extensive portfolio, which includes numerous restaurant and fast-food chains such as Krispy Kreme, Papa John’s, Auntie Anne’s, and the 155 Five Guys stores he sold in 2016. He also co-founded the Big Chicken chain.
In addition to Google, O’Neal has invested in other technology companies, such as Ring, which was then acquired by Amazon. He also invested in another tech giant, Apple.
