Thirty Five Ventures as the operating holding entity, Boardroom as the media platform, and the pre-IPO Coinbase, Postmates, and Weedmaps positions.
Kevin Durant's operating architecture has been built on the Rich Kleiman partnership since 2013 — Kleiman as Durant's manager, business partner, and co-founder of the Thirty Five Ventures operating holding entity. Thirty Five Ventures (KD's playing number when the company was founded) is the platform that houses Durant's operating businesses (Boardroom media, Boardroom+ subscription, various content initiatives), his passive venture positions (Coinbase pre-IPO angel, Postmates pre-acquisition, Weedmaps early, Rapha cycling, Draftkings early), and his sports-franchise minority stake (Philadelphia Union in Major League Soccer, acquired 2020). Durant's on-court career includes the Warriors championship years (2016-2019), the Nets years, and the Suns years (current), with career on-court earnings that will exceed $600 million by career-end. The Thirty Five Ventures architecture is the reference for how a top-magnitude active athlete builds an operating platform with early venture positions during peak playing years.
The Thirty Five Ventures architecture is the mid-career athlete-founder equivalent of what LeBron built with SpringHill (covered in the Institute's LeBron reference). Boardroom is the media platform; the venture portfolio provides passive founder-equity exposure across a diversified set of consumer and technology positions; the Philadelphia Union MLS stake provides sports-franchise appreciation exposure. The Kleiman partnership is the reference for how an athlete-founder combines with a business-partner-manager who owns the operating side while the athlete provides brand and reach.
Thirty Five Ventures was co-founded in 2016 by Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman as the operating holding entity for the Durant-Kleiman operating and venture activities. Kleiman had joined Durant as his manager in 2013 (departing Roc Nation Sports after having been introduced to Durant through that agency's representation of Durant's early NBA career), and by 2016 the two had built a business relationship that warranted formal operating structure. The name references Durant's playing jersey number 35 during his Oklahoma City Thunder years.
The Durant-Kleiman partnership is analytically significant because it is one of the most enduring athlete-partner operating relationships in the industry. Where LeBron partnered with lifelong friend Maverick Carter (covered in the LeBron reference), and Curry has partnered with the Peyton-Smith combination on Unanimous Media (covered in the Steph Curry reference), Durant partnered with Kleiman — a music-industry manager who transitioned to athlete-representation-then-operating-partner. The pattern — athlete plus operating partner as founder duo — is the reference architecture for the modern athlete-founder operating platform.
Durant's venture activity through Thirty Five Ventures is the case study for the athlete-founder angel-investing pattern that produces material returns when the underlying companies scale to IPO or strategic acquisition.
Durant was an early angel investor in Coinbase (through Thirty Five Ventures) predating the various formal funding rounds that took Coinbase through IPO. Coinbase completed its direct-listing IPO on the NASDAQ in April 2021 at a market capitalization of approximately $65 billion at first-day close. The Durant / Thirty Five Ventures position was structured as an early angel investment and held through IPO; the specific position size and post-IPO trading pattern is not publicly disclosed. The Coinbase position is the reference case for how a pre-IPO angel investment structured with founder-brand alignment (Durant's tech-and-culture credibility with Coinbase's audience) produces material returns.
Thirty Five Ventures was an early angel investor in Postmates, the food-delivery platform, at various funding rounds predating the December 2020 acquisition by Uber for approximately $2.65 billion in stock. The Postmates position was one of Thirty Five Ventures's earlier consumer-technology positions and produced a strategic-acquisition exit at attractive returns relative to the various angel-round entry costs.
Additional Thirty Five Ventures positions have included Weedmaps (the cannabis-technology company that went public via SPAC in 2021), DraftKings (through various pre-IPO rounds and the 2020 SPAC-listing), Rapha (the premium cycling apparel and content brand), and dozens of other consumer, technology, and content companies. Full portfolio disclosure is not public. The general pattern is early-stage angel and Series A / B participation where Durant's brand credibility and Thirty Five Ventures's active-management capability provide value beyond the passive capital.
The remaining components of Durant's composite architecture include the Philadelphia Union MLS ownership position, the on-court NBA earnings, and the tax and estate framework applicable to his multi-state playing career and post-playing operating platform.
In 2020 Kevin Durant acquired a minority ownership position in the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer, part of the Jay Sugarman-controlled ownership group. The acquisition established Durant as the first NBA-level active athlete to hold ownership position in an MLS franchise. MLS franchise values have appreciated materially through the 2020s (driven by the Apple TV media deal, Lionel Messi's arrival at Inter Miami, and the broader sports-franchise-value re-rating), and Durant's minority position has appreciated accordingly. The Union's specific franchise valuation is not publicly disclosed.
Kevin Durant's career NBA on-court earnings will exceed $600 million by career-end at typical career-length assumptions. His career has spanned four teams (Seattle SuperSonics / Oklahoma City Thunder, Golden State Warriors, Brooklyn Nets, Phoenix Suns) across four different tax jurisdictions, with the associated jock-tax and residency-choice implications. The Warriors years (California) were high-marginal-rate state-tax years; the Suns years (Arizona) are lower-marginal-rate. The Institute's Pro-Athlete Team-Picker tool walks the state-tax and jock-tax framework applicable to multi-team career trajectories.
The Thirty Five Ventures operating platform, the Coinbase and Postmates venture exits, and the Union franchise position all present founder-equity and gain-recognition transactions that draw on the framework covered in the Institute's Liquidity Event Playbook. Durant's specific entity structures for the Thirty Five Ventures operating businesses and the venture portfolio are not publicly disclosed; the framework analysis is the same as for other athlete-founder operating platforms at similar scale.