Saquon Barkley has earned nearly $80 million in NFL salary and bonuses since 2018.
Instead of spending the money on lavishly, the Philadelphia Eagles running backs invested millions of IT in a variety of venture funds and high-tech startups, according to a report published by Profile on September 3.
These funds and startups reportedly include humanity, Neural Ink, a Neurotechnology Company owned by Elon Musk, Polymet, a forecast market, and a venture capital fund founder fund.
“I was thinking that I could only play for a long time, so I really have to use it, continue investing and create wealth for me and my family,” Berkley told his profile.
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He signed a $31.2 million contract after Berkley came second in the 2018 NFL Draft.
“When you declared for the NFL Draft and realized where the draft was, it was like, ‘What do you know? I want to follow Marshawn Lynch’s method.’ I don’t want to touch it. I want to touch on that.
Barkley has approval agreements with brands such as Nike, Pepsi and Toyota. He earns an estimated $10 million a year from his support, sports marketing analyst Bob Dorfman told Front Office Sports in January.
The NFL star initially parked many of his rookie contracts in traditional long-term investments like the S&P 500 index fund, Profile reports. He also put a portion of his income into property, including his recent purchase of a $3.9 million home in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Recently, they have been accepting the risk of investing in a mobile payment app strike in 2021 and announcing plans to use, for example, to convert all marketing and approved revenues to Bitcoin. Since then, Bitcoin has more than tripled its price, “turning a $10 million revenue stream into a $35 million asset,” the profile says.
More broadly, startup investment can be a risky approach to money management. Even young businesses, trendy companies with high ratings, are never guaranteed to succeed. Barkley funds more than 10 startups, typically between $250,000 and $500,000 per startup, with the reported profile probably only a small portion of his career revenues.
The move to investing in startups began after he read Tiel’s book “Zero to One,” and according to his profile he identified his target through word-of-mouth referrals from business manager Ken Katz’s investor network. Barkley will interrogate the founder or founder of the company just before choosing to invest, he told the publication.
“It’s about asking what they represent, what their mission is, why they think they’re going to succeed,” Berkley said. “They need to be confident, but arrogance is a turn-off.”
Barkley, 28, kicked off his eighth NFL season (more than twice the length of the average NFL player’s career on September 4th. In his career from severe injuries in 2020, he spoke to “the best business show” on the 2021 episode to ensure he doesn’t miss out on much of his third NFL season.
The injury has made Barkley reflect, he said: running backs tend to withstand a lot of physical contact and have shorter careers than many other professional athletes. If he wasn’t planning on playing as long as other superstar athletes (people like LeBron James and Tom Brady), he said he would need to embrace a non-football financial strategy on his paycheck to “create generational wealth.”
“If you sit out from football for a year, you realize that this game can be taken away from you,” Berkley said.
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