Fortune | FORTUNE 21小时前
Peter Thiel sold 20 million shares of Facebook just months after its IPO—but they’d be worth nearly $15 billion more if he had held on
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PayPal联合创始人彼得·蒂尔作为Facebook的早期外部投资者,虽然获得了丰厚回报,但出售股票的时机可能并不完美。2004年,他以50万美元购入Facebook 10%的股份。在2012年Facebook上市后,他出售了大部分股份,获利约4亿美元。如果持有至今,这些股份价值将达到约147.6亿美元。尽管如此,蒂尔的净资产仍高达217亿美元,这得益于他在PayPal和Palantir的投资。文章还提到了其他因Facebook成功而致富的投资者,以及苹果公司早期联合创始人罗纳德·韦恩的类似案例。

💰 彼得·蒂尔在2004年以50万美元投资Facebook,获得了10%的股份,当时的估值为490万美元。

📈 2012年Facebook上市后,蒂尔出售了约2010万股股票,获利约4亿美元。如果他继续持有这些股票,其价值将达到约147.6亿美元。

💡 蒂尔投资Facebook的初衷是看好该公司的早期市场,即大学生群体,他认为投资者往往会低估自己不使用的东西。

🌟 Facebook的成功也造就了许多百万富翁和亿万富翁,包括马克·扎克伯格、达斯汀·莫斯科维茨、爱德华多·萨维林、谢丽尔·桑德伯格和肖恩·帕克。

🍎 文章还提到了苹果公司早期联合创始人罗纳德·韦恩的案例,他出售了苹果公司10%的股份,如果持有至今,价值可能高达数百亿美元。

For PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, being the first outside Facebook investor was hardly a bust—but there may be some seller’s remorse. 

The tech entrepreneur first coughed up $500,000 in 2004 for a 10% stake in the company, just months into its creation—giving it a value of about $4.9 million. Nearly a decade later, following the company’s May 2012 IPO, Thiel decided it was time to cash out. Thiel sold about 20.1 million shares in the company—a majority of his stake—for $19.27 to $20.69 each, netting him about $400 million at the time. 

Had he held his shares until today, they would be worth about $14.76 billion (Meta’s stock price is $736 at the time of writing), a decision that may haunt even one of Silicon Valley’s savviest investors.

What led him to invest in the first place? He believed the college market—which was Facebook’s original audience—had been underestimated.

“I think investors always have a bias to invest in things they themselves use and they undervalue things they don’t use so there aren’t many investors who are in college,” he said to This Week in Startups in 2015.

Fortune reached out to Thiel for comment.

Facebook is a billionaire farm

Despite selling a majority of his stake in the company, the 57-year-old remained heavily involved for many years, serving on the board until 2022.

“Peter has been a valuable member of our board and I’m deeply grateful for everything he has done for our company—from believing in us when few others would, to teaching me so many lessons about business, economics, and the world,” Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time of Thiel’s stepping down.

Today, Thiel’s net worth sits at about $21.7 billion, according to Bloomberg, thanks in part to the billions he made from being the cofounder of PayPal and Palantir.

And he’s not the only investor to have thrived off the success of Facebook; the social network’s growth has created countless millionaires—and multiple billionaires.

Of course, no one has benefited more financially than Zuckerberg, who is currently the second-richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, with an estimated net worth of $260 billion. In fact, his worth has increased more than any other billionaire this year, with a year-to-date growth of $52.8 billion.

But the company’s lesser-known cofounders have also joined the billionaire club, including Dustin Moskovitz ($11.4 billion) and Eduardo Saverin ($40 billion), as well as former COO Sheryl Sandberg ($2.5 billion) and former president Sean Parker ($3 billion).

The wrong sale at the wrong time

While it’s possible Thiel regrets selling in 2012, nothing might dwarf the early pullout from Apple’s third cofounder, Ronald Wayne.

He cashed out his 10% stake in the computer company for $800 just 12 days after signing the contract. Wayne’s share could now be worth between $75 billion and $300 billion, thanks to the company’s current $3 trillion market cap (his shares would have likely been diluted thanks to new investors and public offering). 

And while Wayne has said he had no regrets at the time since he figured he would one day just be the  “richest man in the cemetery,” he’s since admitted it would’ve been nice not to worry about money. To make ends meet, he’s relied on renting out part of his property, as well as cashing his monthly Social Security check.

“I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never been hungry either,” he told Business Insider.

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