Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · chapter 7 · id zero-to-one-c7-02-the-best-investment-in-a-succe

“The best investment in a successful fund should equal or exceed the rest of the fund combined.”

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Receipts

Founders Fund I -- Facebook investment return datasource alive

Founders Fund invested $500K in Facebook in 2005 at a ~$5M valuation. At Facebook's 2012 IPO, that stake was worth ~$1 billion. The fund was ~$50M, so the Facebook investment alone returned ~20x the entire fund -- far exceeding all other investments combined.

Benchmark Capital -- eBay and Uber investment returnssource alive

Benchmark's ~$6.7M eBay investment (1997) generated over $5 billion at peak from an ~$85M fund. Their ~$12M Uber investment (2011) was worth ~$7 billion at IPO from an ~$425M fund. Both cases: single best deal worth multiples of entire fund.

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