With the seemingly inexhaustible Kleiman running point, Durant has, in just over a year, become a fixture in powerful Valley circles, breaking bread with, receiving intel from, and sometimes coinvesting beside such A-listers as venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Ron Conway, Apple’s Tim Cook and Eddy Cue, YouTube’s Neal Mohan, and a raft of partners and managers at top VC firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, SV Angel, and IVP. Through the 18-month-old umbrella corporation known as the Durant Company, Durant and Kleiman have acquired equity stakes in no fewer than 30 young companies, investing between $50,000 and $250,000 in seed rounds and between $250,000 and $2 million in later-stage rounds.
A short list of the Durant Company’s commitments reads like a catalog of the Valley’s current fixations: Durant and Kleiman have gone in on automated drones (Skydio), personalized medicine (Forward), food stamps by smartphone (Propel), big-data marketing (Zenreach), microlending (Acorns), on-demand delivery (Postmates), quantified health (Q.bio), and polling bots (Polly). They’ve invested in online media brands like the Players’ Tribune and in restaurant and hospitality businesses in New York (Landmark Rooms) and Los Angeles (Ken Friedman’s forthcoming Hearth & Hound). Copycatting LeBron James’s lucrative Blaze Pizza investment, they’ve bought a piece of a customized-pizza chain, Pieology. They’ve got a cold-pressed-juice brand, Wtrmln Wtr. They’ve got a dance-workout-party gym, 305 Fitness, with locations in New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston. And they’ve purchased equity in at least 15 other companies currently in stealth mode, their products too embryonic to shoulder the weight of a celebrity investment being publicized prematurely. Two-thirds of these investments, according to Kleiman, have been made in the 15 months since Durant became a Golden State Warrior.
This investing spree began unofficially a year ago at a now-legendary barbecue and birthday party for Durant held at the Atherton home of Ben and Felicia Horowitz. The entire Warriors team showed up in support of their new teammate, as did team owner Joe Lacob and a who’s who of fellow tech eminences who came to welcome the long-limbed kid from Prince George’s County, Maryland, into the fold. It all started with Kleiman mentioning to longtime friend Steve Stoute, the former music industry heavyweight turned ad agency CEO, that Durant would love some intros in the Valley. Stoute called his pal Horowitz, cofounder of the influential VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, to ask him to throw the soon-to-be 28-year-old a coming-out party. “I didn’t know Kevin that well,” Horowitz tells me, “but Steve’s family. And if family asks for that, we’re barbecuing.”
Not that it took much arm-twisting. The Warriors, as Kleiman notes, have become the de facto “biggest company in Silicon Valley.” They are the home team of the digerati, with a bandwagon big enough to carry the imperial ambitions and mountainous egos of the triple-comma crowd. To them, Durant was the killer app atop the unbeatable operating system. He was also a kindred spirit, capable of making what Stoute calls a “critical, CEO-level, bet-it-all” decision: sacrificing millions of dollars in short-term free-agency money (not to mention complicating his nice-guy brand and infuriating millions of NBA fans) in favor of playing the long game in Northern California. Coming to Golden State was “a businessman’s bet,” Stoute says admiringly, “not an athlete’s bet.”
I know yall wanna beat a dead horse, but this was the most interesting part of the article to me. young black dude getting his hands on everything. that warriors connects seems LEGIT, and it makes his move look alot better from a pure financial standpoint.
Can't believe he shamelessly switched teams just to throw tantrums after. Couldn't even chill after winning a ring, nikka spent portions of the summer arguing on the net across various different accounts 
If a ring and crushing the dude that made him cry on national TV couldn't do it...
@ the username 
Watch your pockets KD
