Mountain View high school to make $40 million in Snap IPO

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (KGO) -- The parent company of Snapchat closed on a high note in its Wall Street debut. Snap opened at $17 a share and quickly jumped $24 a share. That's more than a 40 percent hike, making two former Stanford University students multi-billionaires.

On Thursday morning, co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange.

They're not the only ones celebrating. A Bay Area school is also expected to get a lot richer.

The head of the Saint Francis Growth Fund said they invested $15,000 in Snapchat very early on, and the school has a little more than 2 million shares.

Saint Francis says 2/3 of 2+ million Snapchat shares sold at $17 IPO price ($22.5 million.) The remaining 1/3 of the shares is currently worth $16.2 million.

So how did this happen?

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Barry Eggers from the capital venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, who's also the head of the Saint Francis growth fund, wrote in a blog that he first discovered the power of Snapchat five years ago.

His daughter, a sophomore at Saint Francis at the time, along with some of her friends, explained how popular it was. He made a big investment and it's paying off for his firm and Saint Francis.

Saint Francis officials wouldn't get into specifics about where the money will go, but they did say some of it would go to students scholarships and subsidized tuition along with upgrading the facilities.

Students are excited. "I think it's a big opportunity for Saint Francis, I guess, for them to improve upon their facilities," student Jeevan Prakash said.

Private schools aren't cheap in the Silicon Valley. It costs $16,700 a year to send a student to Saint Francis.

But the school, through their endowment fund, gave out $2.75 million in tuition assistance this year.

There will be more information about their plans later Thursday afternoon.

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