A California School wins $24 million on Snapchat

The private institute, based in Silicon Valley, invested $ 15,000 when the company was starting.If you see your children obsessed with something, put your money there. That seems to Silicon Valley lesson this week, where ideas, investments and millions are left at home. A private technology valley institute has made a fortune with the IPO of Snap. The company behind the Snapchat message application. It is called Saint Francis and is a Catholic Mountain View school. Its managers invested $ 15,000 in the company when it was starting, in 2012.

Stock Exchange.

When Snap began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, the initial investment had been converted into 2.1 million Class A shares. The school sold two-thirds of that stock to Snap’s $ 17-a-side price and made $ 24 million a day, according to Quartz magazine.

With the other third they will continue to earn money. Snap shares rose on Thursday by 44% to $ 24.5. This Friday morning, the shares rose 15% more. The company still does not generate profits, but is already valued at 34 billion dollars, as much as eBay and three times more than Twitter.

The school’s decision.

The school board made the initial investment when Snapchat was more than unknown even to its students in 2012. They did it by fallowing on of the school father’s advice named Barry Eggers, who works as a venture capital investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

In 2012, Eggers’ company invested $ 485,000 in the original Snapchat financing. In a note published Thursday, the investor recalls that his relationship with Snapchat began one day his daughter came home with some friends. He said that they were sitting on the kitchen table looking at their phones and laughing.

Suddenly, his daughter asked him if he had seen an app called Snapchat. She also told him that the app allowed them to make pictures, share them to their friends after a few seconds. Finally, she finished by saying that it was one of the most popular app on the school along with Angry Birds and Instagram.

Mountain View.

Mountain View is a village in the middle of Silicon Valley where there are corporate headquarters such as, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla or Symantec.

The Saint Francis School, founded in 1955, offers on its website “the best preparation for university in an inclusive Catholic and family environment. The principal of the school says on the welcome letter to the parent that every day Incredible things happens on campus. Last Thursday was without a doubt, one of those days.

Snapchat.

Snapchat is a social network and mobile application dedicated to sending files, which disappear from the recipient’s device within 24 hours after they have been published. It was developed by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, students of Stanford University (United States), in 2010.