St. Francis High School in Mountain View parlayed a $15,000 investment into a windfall of at least $24 million, capitalizing on a unique venture capital fund set up by the school’s investment-savvy parents.
The fund paid off when the company began selling shares to the public Thursday and the school sold about 1.4 million of the 2.1 million shares at $17 each.
It’s holding the remaining 700,000 shares, which were valued at about $19 million Friday.
“Now that this is happened we certainly hope that it’s not the last one,” school President Simon Chiu said.
“We hope that there are other investments we’re going to be able to participate in that are going to pay off in a similar fashion.”
St. Francis High School launched the fund in 1990 at the urging of two of the many venture capitalists with children attending the school.
The fund’s aim is to tag along with deep-pocketed investors when they make big bets on startup companies.
The school takes a small sliver of a venture capitalist’s bigger investment in a startup company.
The Snap Inc. investment began at the kitchen table of venture capitalist Barry Eggers.
Eggers said he came home from work one day in 2015 and found his children and their St. Francis schoolmates sitting at the kitchen table, giggling over the new Snapchat app, which allows users to easily exchange messages with videos and photographs. Best of all, the images automatically destruct after a few minutes.
Eggers researched the company and negotiated a $500,000 investment with the company founders, including a $15,000 contribution from the school.
(AP)
