附近上门

There are a few venture investor names that come to mind when thinking about backers of the most valuable fintech and media unicorns. is not usually among them.

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Perhaps that鈥檚 an oversight. At the end of a week that saw cement its status as Europe鈥檚 most valuable startup and move closer to an IPO filing at a of up to $40 billion, it seems timely to observe that Snoop is an investor in both. What鈥檚 more, he got in at valuations several multiples lower than current levels.

It鈥檚 rare that multiple ultra-successful venture investments are the result of mere coincidence. It takes a long time in the ecosystem to reach the apex. And while Snoop is best known as a rapper and entertainer, and to a lesser extent a cannabis investor, 附近上门 data shows he and his investment team have been cultivating a varied venture portfolio for some time.

Snoop is one of several rappers investing actively in startups. As some early investments are maturing into unicorns and decacorns, we thought it鈥檇 be interesting to take a closer look at his and fellow artists鈥� portfolios as they have evolved.

The hip-hop startup connection

First, we should note the culture of startup investment and celebrity have become increasingly intertwined in the past decade or so. Hip-hop and pop artists, in particular, have been active investors in the startup space, as we鈥檝e chronicled before.

Robinhood is a particularly prominent rapper-backed unicorn. Rap and entertainment mogul is also an investor in the zero-fee stock trading platform. The fast-growing fintech is part of a broad portfolio of startups that he, along with his entertainment company聽 and venture subsidiary , have backed. One of them, music service , was acquired by this week for $297 million.

Hip hop artist , or Nas, is also a Robinhood backer, as part of an extensive venture portfolio that dates back a decade. He co-founded a venture firm, , that was an early-stage investor in video doorbell maker and pharma delivery startup (both acquired by in billion-dollar deals), as well as soon-to-be-public .

The artists listed above represent only a handful of the pop and hip-hop stars active in the startup scene. In our look at this space a couple years ago, we identified 21 artists (see ) who participated in seed and venture deals.

Amassing a portfolio

What鈥檚 the startup and rapper connection? We鈥檝e postulated that rap and startup entrepreneurship are both longshot career tracks that celebrate raw ambition and unabashed self-promotion. To make it, both also require an excellent grasp of what sells in the real world.

That鈥檚 where Snoop comes in. Basically anyone with a smidgeon of pop culture familiarity has heard of Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Broadus). The breadth of his entertainment and business portfolio are somewhat encyclopedic, with his Wikipedia alone running to 31 pages. Best known as a rapper, the 49-year-old LA native has sold over 35 million albums worldwide, acted in film and TV, co-hosted a show with Martha Stewart, emceed for pro wrestling, and the list goes on.

There鈥檚 also a fair amount of venture investing in there as well, including a mix of cannabis, consumer, gaming and fintech.

Of these areas, cannabis is the biggest by deal count, as one might expect from the co-founder of l, a marijuana-focused venture fund. The fund has made at least 22 known investments to date, per 附近上门 data. Notably, it took part in a $10 million Series A round for pot delivery service , which has gone on to secure over $200 million in venture funding at a post-money valuation of $650 million.

Snoop鈥檚 list of personal investments, per 附近上门, includes at least eight companies. Besides the aforementioned Klarna and Robinhood (a 2014 investment), he was part of a 2014 Series B for , the online discussion hub at $6 billion. Most recently, the rapper helped back a 2020 venture round for , a Los Angeles plant-based snack food startup that markets pigless pork rinds.

All told, it鈥檚 been a lucrative career. In 2016 ranked Snoop as one of the hip-hop acts of the decade. And that doesn鈥檛 include venture bets.

The cool factor

Notably for the startup space, while Snoop has been great at amassing wealth, he has also done so as a non-nerd. This is a stark contrast to the archetypal venture capitalist, a demographic known, among other things, for its .

While Snoop did don a bowtie, button down and sweater vest for a 2015 TechCrunch Disrupt appearance, one gets the impression this was worn with a hint of irony. (The underlying fashion statement being that if you鈥檙e cool enough, you can wear uncool clothes and they just make you cooler.) By the same token, his latest headline-generating gambit this week — — will assuredly have no dent on his celebrity cred.

This kind of impenetrable cool is supremely attractive to startups, which are often founded by people with the kind of deep appreciation for the perks of popularity that only a high school nerd would understand. Thus founders and their backers commonly bring in celebrities to add a hipness factor that can鈥檛 be developed in-house.

Snoop鈥檚 longstanding and artfully curated celebrity brand — which has cultivated elements of rapper, gangster, pimp, fashion trendsetter, stoner and entertainer — seems to strike a particularly vibrant chord with the venture-backed startup crowd.

One of Snoop鈥檚 earlier forays in the startup promotion world was in 2010, when Zynga, then the hottest social gaming startup in town, hired the rapper to in the Nevada desert as a promotion for its Mafia Wars Las Vegas game franchise. More than 2 million viewers dialed in simultaneously for the stunt.

Klarna was also trading in on image two years ago when it with Snoop granting him a 鈥渕inor shareholder鈥� stake in exchange for starring in its 鈥淕et Smoooth鈥� promotional campaign. This culminated in a series of shorts also featuring afghan hounds, some enormous bejeweled bling, and an exceedingly long piece of toast. Since then, Klarna鈥檚 valuation has soared by roughly 6 times.

Offbeat and genius

Taken as a whole, Snoop鈥檚 portfolio can almost appear like a self-contained survival ecosystem. One could envision living an entire life within it: Consuming cannabis supplied by Eaze, pumping stock on Reddit, trading on Robinhood, vanquishing the munchies with pigless pork rinds, and paying with Klarna鈥檚 buy-now-pay-later option.

Really it has the elements of all industry-changing startup portfolios — kind of crazy and kind of genius. We often see startups fail because they have too much crazy and not enough genius. Or too much genius, and not enough crazy. Snoop鈥檚 portfolio, on the other hand, seems to have an ample dose of both.

聽via Flickr user聽听耻苍诲别谤听. Image has been cropped

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