The Startup Investments That Really Paid Off

Have you ever dreamed about throwing a few bucks into your college room-mate's infant tech venture and seeing it become a massive success? Most of the time, tech investors end up disappointed, but a few of them have reaped impressive financial rewards in recent years. Snap's IPO was no exception, with Lightspeed Venture Partners putting $485,000 into the infant company. They then added a further $7.5 million investment and their stock is now worth about $2.1 billion (initial IPO price).

According to the Wall Street Journal, Kleiner Perkins Caufied and Byers' 1996 investment in Juniper Networks really struck gold. They initially invested $2.75 million and that yielded $7.1 billion. 2,582 times their original outlay. Accel Partners put $14.8 million into "Thefacebook", 12 years ago and that brought them a return some 378 times greater ($5.6 billion), when the social network went public.