The IPO of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat ephemeral messages, has allowed the Saint Francis High School Catholic private school to sit on a treasure trove of tens of millions of dollars of dollars.

And God will give it back to you? In this case, it is rather the app phenomenon for teenagers, Snapchat, which largely “returned” the coin of his play to a private Catholic school in Silicon Valley. It enriched Saint Francis High School with $ 24 million .

This financial windfall comes from a $ 15,000 investment in Snapchat made by the company in 2012, which made many small when the Snap , the company that created Snapchat, was publicly listed on Thursday (March 3rd). “One student parent, investor Barry Egger, was intrigued in 2012 by an application that had seduced his two children, and offered to participate in a fundraiser,” says Simon Chiu, school, in a letter to parents.

This initial placement enabled the Saint Francis High School to obtain 2.1 million Snap shares. During the first steps on Wall Street of the tech star of the moment, the school decided to sell two-thirds of these shares at a unit price of $ 17. There are still about 700,000 shares in the company that could bring in much more. Snap has, indeed, the wind in the sails on the Stock Exchange and the value of the stock has increased by 44% in one day.

“Diversity”

“The impact of this return on investment can not yet be fully measured, but the money will help us achieve the objectives of our strategic plan ,” said Simon Chiu, adding that the $ 24 million will not allow To carry out all projects at once. The school principal stressed that his priority was to “make the school more accessible to our community”. Private schools are not given in Silicon Valley, considered the technological lung of the United States where the country’s highest-paid engineers are located, and enrollment at the Saint-Francis Catholic High School costs $ 17,000. Part of the money will probably be used to create fellowships to improve social mix.

The Snapchat prize pool is certainly of unprecedented scale for the school, but this school is not its first investment in a start-up. Saint Francis High School established in 1990 a specific fund to bet part of the contributions of parents of students on young shoots of Silicon Valley. In 1996, a $ 25,000 investment in a company called Advanced Fiber earned more than two million dollars, the school said on its website.