Insiders

Who will get rich from Twitter's IPO?

October 04, 2013 at 03:42 am IST

MarketScreener.com By

(Reuters) - Just about everyone in Silicon Valley has dreamed of striking it rich with a well-timed investment. Analysts estimate that when Twitter debuts on public markets, its valuation will hit around $10 billion. Here is a list of the number of shares owned by some of the people and investment firms that will benefit the most from Twitter's initial public offering:

Executive officers and directors:

Evan Williams 56,909,847 shares, or 12 percent. Williams was Twitter's CEO until 2010, when current CEO Dick Costolo took the helm. He is now working on a publishing platform, Medium, which is dedicated to long-form content.

Benchmark 31,568,740 shares, or 6.7 percent. Venture firm Benchmark started investing in Twitter in 2009 when it was valued in the $200 million-$250 million range. This stake includes shares owned by partner Peter Fenton, who led the firm's investment in consumer-Internet play Yelp, holds a board seat at Twitter.

Jack Dorsey 23,411,350 shares, or 4.9 percent. Dorsey co-founded Twitter and still serves as its chairman. In 2009, he founded payments service Square and serves as its CEO.

Dick Costolo 7,589,608 shares, or 1.6 percent. A onetime improvisational comedian, Costolo took the helm of Twitter in 2010. He joined Twitter as COO the year before, after he and co-founders sold their web feed management provider FeedBurner to Google in 2007.

Adam Bain, 1,722,350 shares, or less than 1 percent. Bain is the president of global revenue at Twitter. He was formerly the president of audience network at News Corp's Fox Interactive Media.

David Rosenblatt, 283,333 shares, or less than 1 percent. Rosenblatt is the CEO of luxury online retailer 1stdibs.com and is a member of Twitter's board of directors.

The following groups own at least 5 percent:

Rizvi Traverse Management. A closely held private-equity fund based in Michigan, Rizvi has made a name for itself by buying stakes in entertainment companies such as Playboy and movie producer Summit Entertainment. Last year, it led a $200 million funding round in Jack Dorsey's payments company, Square.

Spark Capital. Venture firm Spark started investing in Twitter in 2008. For a time, Spark partner Bijan Sabet served on Twitter's board.

Union Square Ventures. Venture firm Union Square started investing in Twitter in 2008. For a time, USV partner Fred Wilson served on Twitter's board.

DST Global. The investment firm founded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner led a $400 million investment in Twitter in 2011. At the time, Twitter was valued at around $8 billion.

(Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

By Sarah McBride

Stocks mentioned in the article

Add to a list Add to a list 0 selected To use this feature you must be a member Log in Sign up	Price	Change	5d. change	Capi.
TWITTER	-	-	0.00%	-
ETSY, INC.	63.97 USD	-0.19%	+3.31%	7.48B
PLBY GROUP, INC.	0.9028 USD	-2.22%	-0.79%	65.58M
TWITTER, INC.	53.7 USD	+0.66%	+7.64%	41.03B

Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey is Twitter’s co founder. In 2010, Twitter had more than 105 million users who “tweet” about 55 million times a day.

Until fourteen years old, Jack Dorsey, grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri. He had studied science and Technology at University of Missouri and then joined University of New York.

In 2000, he founded a service which allows to send messages from the Web in order to find quickly a taxi. The idea of communicating in a real time comes from AOL instant messenger.

He meets Odeo’s founders, Noah Glass and Evan Williams. Noah Glass markets AudioBlogger, an application allowing to publish audio files on a blog via telephone. Evan Williams is known as co-founder of Pyra Labs, which in origin was a platform of blogs, taken over by Google in 2003.

Together they create a Twitter’s prototype. The idea is allowing users to say what they are doing via SMS. Open to public on July 13 2006, the first version is called stat.us and then twitter.

Until October 16 2008, Jack Dorsey is a CEO. Then he became chairman of the board, and Evan Williams succeeded him.

With its ease of use, Twitter becomes rapidly very popular. In 2007, Twitter won South by Southwest Web awards for blogs.

In May 2009, Dorsey announced his new project, Square, originally the name was Squirrel. This is a start-up which allows people to receive payments by credit card through a small device installed on their mobile phone.

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