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Silicon Valley school makes millions off Snap IPO. Because Silicon Valley

Why let the venture capitalists and tech's uber-rich have all the fun? St. Francis High School took a bet that really paid off.

Ian Sherr Contributor and Former Editor at Large / News
Ian Sherr (he/him/his) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he's always had a connection to the tech world. As an editor at large at CNET, he wrote about Apple, Microsoft, VR, video games and internet troubles. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.
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While the students were making goofy faces on Snapchat, their Silicon Valley school was raking it in.

 James Martin/CNET

Talk about extra credit.

A private school in Silicon Valley, Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, California, stands to make "tens of millions" of dollars, and perhaps even more, because it was one of the earliest investors in Snapchat parent company Snap.

How did this happen? It turns out a private investment fund that helps support the school's long-term initiatives happens to have a board of directors. On that board sits Barry Eggers, a founding partner of the VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners (which invested in Nest, Flixster, GrubHub and Giphy to name a few).

When Lightspeed invested $500,000 in the app's first seed round, $485,000 came from Lightspeed and $15,000 came from the school's growth fund.

"While the full impact has yet to be realized, the return on this investment will allow us to accelerate the goals of our strategic plan," the school said in a statement, adding that includes making school more affordable, improving facilities, helping to recruit faculty and staff and develop new programs for students.