Shaq invested $250,000 in Google in 1999 — then forgot about it for years
The celebrity mentioned how it all happened during a simple lunch at a Los Angeles hotel.
His fans know that Shaquille O’Neal has built a strong track record with investments. Companies regularly pitch ideas to him, and he often relies on instinct when deciding where to put his money. But one of his biggest wins came in 1999 when he invested in Google, even before it was Google, during a simple lunch at a Los Angeles hotel. While watching over some kids and chatting with a few people, he ended up walking into a deal that would later be worth millions. He shared the story of this fascinating investment and how he apparently "forgot" about it in a September 2023 episode of the TechCrunch Disrupt.
How it all happened
“I was at Four Seasons, I was eating lunch and four distinguished gentlemen were sitting there playing with their kids, and the kids recognized me and they’re playing with me,” he recalled, adding, “One gentleman says, ‘I want to talk about this company called Google,’ and was just talking about search engines, saying, ‘You’ll be able to type in anything,’ and I was like, ‘That sounds good.‘ We had a meeting with them, and it looked good, and I put some money in, and I forgot about it,” he said. As he said, the $250,000 investment episode got wiped away from his mind until a few years later, when he read a newspaper.
The investment he forgot made him millions
O’Neal said in the interview, “The newspaper told me how much I made, and I couldn’t believe how much I made." His investment had skyrocketed to $16.5 million, and he suddenly regretted not investing more in the company. Yet, the money had leapt beyond his wildest expectations. And although he confesses he had made some mistakes in investing to get rich quickly, the incident taught him a strategy that he believes works.
Investment is key
As he speaks in his interviews, the two main pillars of his wealth are education and an investing strategy he learned from the Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos. “I went to a conference in ‘97 or ‘98, and I heard Jeff Bezos say if you invest in things, it’s going to change people’s lives,” he described. “And when I heard Jeff Bezos say that, I started investing in things that are gonna change people’s lives. And that’s been great for me, and I don’t like to sit up here like I’m an expert, but that has always been my style,” Shaq added.
That approach stands in sharp contrast to what typically happens with athletes and money. A 2009 report by Sports Illustrated cited by Investopedia found that 78% of NFL players face bankruptcy or financial stress within just two years of retirement, while 60% of NBA players are broke within five years. This is because traditional careers can span 30 to 50 years, but a professional athlete’s career is far shorter, often lasting less than five years, which makes it even more important to diversify your investment fields.
Today, Shaq still holds some shares in the tech unicorn company. A large chunk of his money goes into funding education for non-privileged kids. An MBA and Doctor of Education, he aims to teach a million kids to read through his various ed-tech startups. Education, for him, is the most important, he says. “I’m rich and famous and got a lot of followers, but I wanted to show them that there’s more to that.”
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