German football star Mario Götze plans to enter the venture capital field after retiring from football; he previously invested in NFTs.

PANews reported on November 29th that Mario Götze, a key player in Germany's World Cup, is 33 years old, an age when players typically begin to consider life after their professional sporting careers. However, Götze has been preparing for this for several years, building a strong private investment portfolio that will continue to grow after his first professional career ends. About seven years ago, his first venture capital deal involved a startup spun off from the University of Dortmund. Götze's investment vehicle, Companion-M, focuses on early-stage startups in fields such as software, healthcare, cybersecurity, and biotechnology. Götze and a small team of advisors typically consider around 100 potential deals per month and make one or two angel investments in companies that enter the seed or pre-seed stage. Götze stated that he is also open to investing in private credit and is considering adding one or two more investments before the end of the year.

It is reported that Götze had previously invested in NFTs and changed his X account name to mariogotze.eth (which he still keeps), while also changing his X account profile picture to Smolverse NFT with the caption "Taking a step into the crypto space" (which has since been changed to another profile picture).