ATLANTA — Imagine growing up with nothing but determined to follow your dreams of becoming something, proving where you come from doesn’t define where you finish.
Channel 2’s Karyn Greer talked with the newest member of ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank,” Rashaun Williams, who has strong ties to Atlanta.
“My mom was on welfare. Everybody in my neighborhood sold drugs or were on drugs, and saw my friends get killed in front of me,” he said.
Williams didn’t grow up wealthy on Chicago’s South Side, but he grew up knowing the importance for him to be successful.
Determined not to be a statistic, he drove more than 700 miles from Chicago to Atlanta to hand-deliver his application to attend Morehouse College.
“It was like 9 a.m., wait for him to open the door, and he just looked at me, shook his head, and was like, ‘Mr. Williams, I’ll say yes.’ And I handed him my application. He just signed it on the spot,” Williams said.
That determination helped shape his path, leading him to the world of investing where he is now managing millions and helping others build what he didn’t have: generational wealth.
“I got an offer from Goldman [Sachs], and I said, ‘I thank you for the offer. This is like my dream. I will accept it under one condition,’” Williams said.
“I said, ‘If you let me work in Chicago instead of Wall Street,’” he said. “And they said yes. I went back to Chicago, started a nonprofit to teach financial literacy.”
As one of the newest guest sharks on “Shark Tank,” which has moved production from Los Angeles to Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Williams says its about changing lives.
“I started my own venture capital fund called Queens Bridge Venture Partners with a rapper named Nas,” Williams said. “We were early investors in Coinbase and Robinhood and Dropbox and Lyft and Ring, and then I launched four more VC funds afterwards.”
He added, “My last fund was a billion and a half investing in tech companies. So I made a lot of money from tech and I built my brand.”
The husband and father sees himself in many of the entrepreneurs, hungry, starting from scratch and chasing a dream.
“The work on ‘Shark Tank’ is real,” Williams said. “And I’m really good at that. That’s literally what I do is my day job. The TV stuff was a little interesting.”
Williams is also one of the new limited partners added to the ownership group of the Atlanta Falcons.
“Shark Tank” airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on Channel 2.
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