While most of the media have focused on the big corporations who have made millions (or billions) of dollars from the the public flotation of Snapchat, one story deserves some attention. On March 3, 2017 Simon Chiu, who is the president of Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, California, wrote to parents to share some “monumental news”. This was the money the school had made from Snapchat’s initial public offering.
Back in 2012, invested $15,000 in a new app that started to become popular with children. In particular it was the amount of use the app was getting from a brother and sister who attended to the school: Andrew and Natalie Eggers. Instead of getting in trouble over their time spend playing the new app – called Snapchat – the use of the app sparked an idea in the mind of the school president.
Mr Eggers, father of the children, was also impressed. A partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a local investment firm, he decided that his company would invest $485,000 in Snapchat, which happened to be the first investment Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy (Sanpchat’s founders) received. At the same time, Saint Francis High School also decided to add $15,000, to make the total initial investment into the image messaging and multimedia mobile application.
When Snapchat floated the school sold many of its shares on at the $17 opening price. This has raised, the BBC reports, a cool $24 million. Not only is the school happy, Mr Eggers is too, telling CNBC : “It’s been amazing for us to watch how far Evan and Bobby and Snap have come since that kitchen table conversation between my daughter and me… and how much they’ve already changed how we communicate today.”
