Richard Liu built JD.com from its retail roots into an online shopping and logistics business. Serena Williams built one of tennis’s most successful careers, then widened her work in business and investment. Their achievements belong to different industries, but both stories reach beyond the job titles most often attached to their names.
Serena’s father and former coach is Richard Williams, a different person from JD.com founder Richard Liu.
Richard Liu: from a Beijing shop to JD.com
Richard Qiangdong Liu is JD.com’s founder and chairman. His official company biography records a sociology degree from Renmin University of China in 1996 and an executive MBA from China Europe International Business School in 2011. His business career, however, began with selling physical products rather than running an internet platform.
JD’s predecessor, JD Multimedia, started as a brick-and-mortar business in Beijing in 1998. It sold magneto-optical products in Zhongguancun, an electronics trading area. The move online came later, under difficult circumstances: the SARS outbreak in 2003 disrupted shopping, and the business began using online postings to sell goods.
According to JD’s account of that transition, the business became an online retailer in 2004. That explains why accounts of Liu’s career can give either 1998 or 2004 as a starting point. The earlier date belongs to the physical retail operation; the later one marks the online business identified in his official biography.
Those beginnings also help explain JD’s approach. Its original retail model involved sourcing and stocking goods, rather than simply bringing buyers and sellers together. Moving the shop online changed the way customers placed orders, but it did not remove the practical work of buying, storing and delivering products.
Why logistics became central to the business
In 2007, JD began building its own logistics network. The company’s historical account connects that decision with complaints about slow deliveries and damaged parcels. Bringing warehousing and delivery into the business gave JD more control over what happened after a customer placed an order.
The network later became a service that other businesses could use. In its separate report, “From In-House to Open for Business”, JD describes a November 2016 decision to open logistics services to outside clients. The offering went beyond moving parcels: it included warehousing and supply-chain support for businesses with different requirements.
A clothing seller, for example, may need help forecasting demand and managing inventory. A food supplier needs to consider delivery speed and storage conditions. JD’s report uses these differences to explain why serving external clients required more than applying one delivery process to every customer.
This is a useful way to understand Liu’s business story. The online storefront is the part a shopper sees, while stock management, warehouses and transport make the order possible. Developing that infrastructure gave JD an additional business serving other companies, alongside its own retail activity.
From chief executive to chairman
JD listed on Nasdaq in 2014 and completed a secondary listing in Hong Kong in 2020. JD Logistics followed with its own Hong Kong listing in 2021. These milestones show the business developing beyond its original shop and website into a group with separately listed operations.
Liu’s executive role changed on 7 April 2022, when JD announced that Lei Xu would succeed him as chief executive. The announcement said Liu would remain chairman, concentrating on long-term strategy, mentoring younger managers and contributing to rural revitalisation.
His current company biography still identifies him as founder and chairman. An older article calling him JD’s CEO may therefore be accurate for its publication date, but it does not describe his present title. Leaving the chief executive position was a change in responsibilities, rather than the end of his association with the company.
Serena Williams: the results behind a landmark tennis career
Williams’s career began long before her name became familiar beyond sport. The WTA records her first professional match in qualifying at Québec City in 1995 and her tour main-draw debut in Moscow in 1997. By the end of 1998, she was inside the world’s top 20.
Her first major singles breakthrough came at the 1999 US Open, where she defeated Martina Hingis in the final. It was the beginning of a Grand Slam singles record that eventually reached 23 titles, the most by a woman in the Open Era.
The WTA’s career profile puts those achievements in context: 73 singles titles, 319 weeks at world No. 1 and a 186-week uninterrupted spell at the top that tied Steffi Graf’s record. Her major singles titles were spread across all four tournaments:
- Australian Open: seven titles
- Wimbledon: seven titles
- US Open: six titles
- Roland Garros: three titles
She twice held all four major singles titles simultaneously. The first “Serena Slam” ran from Roland Garros in 2002 through the Australian Open in 2003. The second began at the 2014 US Open and ended at Wimbledon in 2015. These were four consecutive majors across two seasons, rather than all four won within a single calendar year.
Doubles, Olympic gold and the Williams partnership
The figure of 23 covers singles majors only. Serena and Venus won 14 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles together, while Serena also won two mixed-doubles majors with Max Mirnyi in 1998. Her record therefore extends well beyond individual competition.
She also won four Olympic gold medals: doubles with Venus at Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008 and London 2012, plus singles at London 2012. Winning every major and Olympic gold in both singles and doubles is a particularly clear measure of the range of her achievements.
Venus was both a partner and an opponent in some of Serena’s biggest matches. Serena’s 23rd major singles title came against her sister in the 2017 Australian Open final. Their story includes rivalry at the highest level as well as a long-running partnership representing the United States.
Why the 2022 departure needs context
Williams stepped away from tennis after the 2022 US Open, but that is no longer the whole account of her appearances. In 2026, she and Venus reunited in doubles at Cincinnati and the US Open.
The WTA’s September 2026 match report records their US Open first-round defeat by Chan Hao-Ching and Maya Joint after a three-hour match. That return does not change the historical singles totals above, but it matters when describing where her tennis career stands. Calling 2022 her final professional appearance would overlook those later matches.
Her investment work: Serena Ventures becomes Starfire Ventures
Williams’s investment career developed alongside her tennis career. In a July 2026 interview with Fast Company, she confirmed that Serena Ventures had been renamed Starfire Ventures. She explained that she wanted the organisation to have an identity that could grow beyond her own name and recognise the team behind it.
She also described an investment approach that combines a framework for choosing companies with personal judgement. Her comments emphasised hearing from founders who might otherwise struggle to get attention, while still expecting the businesses selected to produce financial returns. She presented investment and philanthropy as different activities.
Liu’s story centres on founding and overseeing a retail and logistics enterprise. Williams’s investing work involves choosing and backing companies led by other founders.
Updated: 2 October 2026.