Russian former tennis icon Maria Sharapova recently spoke about her failed business endeavors with legend Andy Roddick. While Sharapova aced her tennis game, her business objective with Andy Roddick ten years back didn’t make a good move. This former world’s number one tennis star invested and brought her organic premium candy brand, Sugarpova. After that, her list of business ventures included many other brands such as Supergoop, Tonal, and more.
Sharapova wanted to make products exclusive to athletes with her expertise. Despite making a good fortune from health and wellness, this former Russian tennis star’s investment in technology didn’t work out too well.
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“Not that I want to blame Andy.” – Maria Sharapova went candid about the unsuccessful venture
In a recent podcast with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, Sharapova talks about her business ventures and failed plans. She exclusively spoke about one particular technology-oriented venture with Andy Roddick, which didn’t work out well.
Sharapova commented- “there was one deal. Actually, Andy Roddick called me up. Not that I want to blame Andy. But he did call me up. He says there was a, it was an app, failed app right now, at the time was very similar to what cameo ended up doing very well. The user face had two different apps, so one for the user and one for the hotels that was offering these services. And I said to the founder, I said, why can this just be one app for the people that are providing the service and for the user? And he said, We just can’t do that. And I said, Well, okay, I still believe in you.”
However, the plan didn’t work out and Sharapova lost a heck load of money. She further said-“But I never I just I thought that was going to be challenging and actually invested quite a bit into it. And it never took off. And that was my first bit of technology. And this must have been over 10 years ago.”
Despite this failure, Sharapova made quite an impression with her organized candy line Sugarpova.
Maria Sharapova opened up about her reasons behind starting Sugarpova
Previously in an interview with Forbes, Sharapova brought up the topic of her candy line. She brought it up by responding to her feelings about retirement. She said- “I was always considered a tennis player, I just didn’t want to be defined by this one thing, and although I knew that I was good at it, I felt like I had a lot more to offer.”
She further spoke about how this plan started abruptly- “I didn’t really have a vision for it; I didn’t really understand where it would be in five to ten years, But it’s been a fascinating journey, and I’m having a lot of fun along the way.”
Maria Sharapova’s revelation about her failed business venture ten years back represented that she has come a long way. Now with her successful Sugarpova, this Russian tennis legend proved herself a great entrepreneur.
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Edited by
Ananya Giri