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A lot of people got rich on Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) stock following the Twitter IPO this week.
Especially after it opened 73% above its IPO price at $45.10.
The company announced Wednesday that it priced the 70 million shares at $26, which will raise about $1.8 billion dollars for the social media and messaging darling. Although the company tried to keep expectations low following Facebook's (Nasdaq: FB) ill-starred debut last year, the road show seems to have generated enough demand to warrant a higher offering price.
According to the prospectus, the underwriters have an overallotment that would enable them to sell an additional 10.5 million shares at the underwriting discount, if all 70 million are sold. If that option is exercised, Twitter will raise a total of $2.1 billion.
So who, exactly, is going to get rich from the Twitter IPO?
Here's Who Makes Out in the Twitter Deal
First in line are the existing stockholders.
These include founder Ev Williams, whose 59 million shares will make him the only billionaire straight out of the IPO. His co-founder, Jack Dorsey, will find himself $586 million richer, and Richard Costolo, the chief executive officer who has overseen Twitter's growth to public listing, will make about $192 million.
Then, there are the institutional investors, the venture capital funds that participated in Twitter's six rounds of funding.
Startups like Twitter typically go through several rounds of lettered capital raises (e.g., Series A, Series B, Series C, and so on) to fund operations and growth. In these rounds, the company sells convertible preferred shares of its stock to accredited investors and institutions like venture capital funds and angel investment funds. If the company makes it to an IPO, those shares of preferred stock convert to common stock.
According to the S-1 filing that precedes the IPO, five firms – Rizvi Traverse, Benchmark Capital Partners, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and DST Capital – hold 5% stakes in the company. That gives each of them roughly 24 million shares apiece, which will be worth about $570 million.
Here's an example, to give you a sense of the return…