It was the sole investor in Snap’s $485,000 seed round in 2012, an early stake that super-charged Lightspeed’s returns.Ī particularly big winner on Thursday will be Jeremy Liew, the Lightspeed partner who led the Snap investment. At the top of the expected IPO price range of $14 to $16 per share, that stake would be worth about $1.4 billion. Lightspeed owns 87 million Snap shares, according to public filings, or 8.6 percent of the company. “A fund’s reputation is strengthened, which can mean enhanced deal flow and greater confidence that lightning will strike again.”

“Monster IPOs in particular can be quite significant,” said Beezer Clarkson, a limited partner and managing director with Sapphire Ventures. Firms that are perceived to pick the best companies, a group that includes Benchmark, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, can often beat out other VCs for coveted deals and raise more funding from their limited partners. That investment in the owner of social media app Snapchat promises a big boost to Lightspeed’s status in the fiercely competitive Silicon Valley venture capital community. Lightspeed stands to reap one of its best returns from an investment that started as a $485,000 bet on a college student. The firm is now poised to cash in handily on the biggest technology IPO in three years, Snap Inc, which is set to make its public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday at a valuation that could top $22 billion. (Reuters) - A decade ago, Lightspeed Venture Partners was an obscure firm investing in highly technical startups that were mostly unknown outside of Silicon Valley.

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO FILE PHOTO - Bitcoin investor Jeremy Liew, a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, speaks at a New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) virtual currency hearing in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S.

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