The retired tennis champion is launching a company with products whiz Eric Ryan called Will Perform, becoming part of a $1 billion industry to help everyday athletes recover from post-workout muscle aches.
Serena Williams knows what it’s like to feel sore. She played professional tennis for nearly three decades, ending her career in August at the age of 40. But, she says, she never found a remedy she could count on.
So she added another title to her illustrious resume: cofounder of Will Perform, which targets physical recovery from workouts with products for topical pain relief and muscle and skin care. Think newer, cooler-looking, nicer-smelling, slightly more expensive versions of BioFreeze and Icy Hot, her competitors in the estimated $1 billion industry. Will Perform launches Thursday.
“My trainer said, ‘He who recovers best is the one who wins,’” Williams tells Forbes via Zoom from her Florida home. “We all as athletes are putting our body on the line every single day. It’s so important to be able to recover.”
Williams says she came up with the idea for Will Perform in 2021 with the collaboration of veteran consumer products whiz Eric Ryan. Over the past two decades, Ryan, 50, has had a string of successes, cofounding Method eco-friendly soaps, Olly gummy vitamins and supplements and Welly bandages and first aid. All three companies have been partly or wholly acquired by much larger firms.
Eric Ryan, Will Perform Co-Founder
Courtesy of Will Perform
“The core insight is that all generations have a different relationship to health,” Ryan says. “My thesis has been that Millennials starting out really view health and wellness as a lifestyle pursuit.” He points out changes in how we exercise (Soulcycle and Barry’s Boot Camp) and how we dress (Lululemon-inspired athleisure). Ryan says how we care for our bodies is the next big thing.
The timing was good for the Williams-Ryan pairing. Ryan’s revelation meshed with Williams’ focus on self-care and recovery. “In recent years, especially toward the end of my career, I started to think more about recovery and also the role that it’s played in my career,” Williams says. She sees a market that includes anyone who’s active, and includes herself. “I want to provide things that people really need, and things that I can actually use that are very authentic to me.”
Ryan discovered that the existing topical pain relief brands connect the most with older male consumers, but that consumption patterns skewed toward younger people and more women. “We saw that as the opportunity to really try and grow the creative brand that would connect to that audience,” Ryan says. “But we have to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate men.”
The path that linked Williams and Ryan ran through Berkeley, California, where venture capitalist Erik Moore heads Base Ventures, the first Black-run seed investing firm in the Bay Area. Ryan and Moore met by chance in a hotel gym in Bali, Indonesia, two decades ago while both men were on their honeymoons. They became fast friends. Base Ventures backed Ryan’s nutrition startup, Olly, and later his first-aid firm, Welly, and Ryan invested in Base Ventures. Williams, also an investor in Base Ventures, became familiar with Ryan as a result of investing in Olly. Moore introduced Williams to Ryan in 2020 and the two hit it off.
“I want to provide things that people really need and things that I can actually use that are very authentic to me.”
Ryan brought in Hank Mercier as the CEO of Will Perform and its third cofounder. Mercier had worked for Ryan at Method and stayed on when the soap company was acquired by SC Johnson in 2017. He ran all of North America for SC Johnson’s lifestyle brands, which include Method and Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products, among others.
Hank Mercier, Will Perform CEO
Courtesy of Will Perform
“I call Eric Ryan the Serena Williams of packaged goods,” Mercier says, only partly in jest. The respect that both Ryan and Williams have across the industry, he says, has made his job easier, in everything from landing Will Perform’s first-choice contract manufacturer to luring experienced executives to create the nine-person Will Perform team.
Will Perform raised $8 million from three investors with deep ties to the cofounders, in a round led by Erik Moore’s Base Ventures. “Serena supported Base from the very early days, and we’re thrilled to be supporting her endeavors,” says Moore. Serena Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Serena Williams, also invested, as did Obvious Ventures, a firm co-run by Ev Williams (known for cofounding Twitter and blogging site Blogger). Closing the circle: Ryan also serves as an advisor to Obvious Ventures.
Williams is a multi-hyphenate, running her venture capital firm, authoring a children’s book, overseeing her two other entrepreneurial ventures—the S by Serena fashion line and SW Jewelry—doing endorsements and speaking gigs, as well as being a mom to 5-year-old Olympia. (She also ranks as a member of Forbes’ 2022 list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, worth an estimated $260 million.) Asked about a possible return to competitive tennis, which she hinted at in an October press conference, Williams says with good humor, “You never know what’s going to happen with me, right?”
Though Williams delegates some areas to the Will Perform team, she’s been hands-on at times—for example, when it came to packaging. “I wanted to create something that felt different and felt fresh and felt exciting for Gen-Z or for Millennials to use,” she says. The look is distinctive—her image appears prominently on the front of the pain-relief roll-on product Will Relieve, and much smaller on the back of the other three products Forbes tried in advance of the launch. The products come in sleek, round white plastic bottles that sport bursts of color—a bright-green ring around a lemon-yellow cap for Will Relieve, and two tones of orange atop the Will Soothe daily muscle lotion. Each of the products has a loop of plastic connected to the lid, created to hook onto your gym bag.
The U.S. market for topical pain relief, says Mercier, is about $1 billion annually. One of its topical pain products, Will Cool, will cost about $1 more than existing competitor BioFreeze—or $12.99 for a 3-ounce roll-on bottle. What you’re getting for that extra dollar is “a product in a custom bottle with a formula and a fragrance that’s delightful,” Mercier says. Items will begin selling Thursday at the Will Perform website, at Target starting December 18. To get the word out, Mercier is forgoing traditional advertising in favor of in-store displays at Target and social media content—leveraging Serena Williams’ 16 million Instagram followers and 10.6 million Twitter followers.
“What I love about Serena as a cofounder: She’s about winning,” Ryan says. “She’s this icon of style, beauty and grace. She and I bond over design and style. There’s just nobody else who brings those two opposing ideas together.”