We Speak Entrepreneurs

Coco Gauff Took Ownership of Her Own Career and Built Coco Gauff Enterprises at 21

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

Coco Gauff, founder of Coco Gauff Enterprises. Photo by Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Plenty of athletes sign with the biggest agency they can find. Coco Gauff went the other way. At 21, the highest paid female athlete in the world ended a partnership that had managed her since childhood and launched her own company, with herself at the top of the chart.

Gauff announced Coco Gauff Enterprises on April 2, 2025, supported by talent agency WME, which holds no ownership stake in the venture. The move ended her time with Team8, the boutique firm co-founded by Roger Federer and his longtime agent Tony Godsick, which had represented her since she was a teenager. In her announcement she described herself as an “athlete, entrepreneur, and changemaker,” and wrote: “From the moment I first picked up a tennis racket, I’ve always believed my purpose extended far beyond the court. Today, I’m thrilled to announce CoCo Gauff Enterprises, a venture that reflects my passion for making an impact — not just in tennis, but in business, philanthropy, and beyond.”

The business she is taking ownership of is a large one. Sportico ranked Gauff the highest paid female athlete in the world for the third straight year in December 2025, with estimated earnings of $31 million, $23 million of it earned off the court through partnerships with more than a dozen brands including New Balance, Rolex, Bose, Head, Mercedes-Benz and Chase Bank. She added a second Grand Slam singles title at the French Open in 2025.

The structure is the story. Rather than handing her commercial life to an agency and collecting a share, Gauff built a company that sits between her and the market, with WME providing support and resources while the ownership, and the decisions, stay with her. It is the same ownership play a growing line of star athletes is making across sports: treat the career as a business, build the firm while the playing years are at their peak, and let the company outlast the final match.

We Speak Entrepreneurs

Lucy Guo Left Scale AI in 2018 and Kept Her Shares. At 30 She Became the Youngest Self Made Woman Billionaire While Building Passes

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

We Speak Media

Lucy Guo, co-founder of Scale AI and founder and CEO of Passes. Photo by KBDBK, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The most valuable decision of Lucy Guo’s career was the one she made on her way out the door. When she left Scale AI in 2018, two years after co-founding it, she kept her stake. In April 2025 Forbes named her the youngest self made woman billionaire in the world, and she earned the title while running a completely different company.

Guo, a self taught coder who dropped out of Carnegie Mellon on a Thiel Fellowship, co-founded Scale AI in 2016 at 21 with Alexandr Wang, who was 19. She ran operations and product design before leaving in 2018, holding on to just under 5% of the company. As Scale’s value climbed, a 2025 tender offer at a $25 billion valuation, followed by Meta’s June 2025 investment at more than $29 billion, that stake carried her net worth to an estimated $1.25 billion at age 30, passing the mark Taylor Swift had set. Forbes counted her among just six self made women billionaires on the planet under 40.

Her working days, though, belong to her second company. Guo founded Passes in 2022, a Los Angeles based platform that lets creators sell subscriptions, chats and content directly to fans in a brand safe setting. Passes has raised about $50 million across three rounds from investors including Bond Capital and Menlo Ventures, at a reported $150 million valuation, and has signed names including gymnast Olivia Dunne and Shaquille O’Neal.

The pairing is the story business students will study. One founder, two companies: the first made her rich because she kept ownership even after she left the building, and the second is the one she is still in the building for, building the creator economy platform she wants to run for the long term.