Investments. Facebook as a Case Study:
In the summer of 2004, venture capitalist Peter Thiel made a $500,000 (About N200,000,000.00) angel investment in the social network Facebook for 10.2% of the company and joined Facebook's board. This was the first outside investment in Facebook.
In April 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million (N5,080,000,000.00) into Facebook.
In April 2006, Facebook closed its Series B funding round. This included $27.5 million (N11,000,000,000.00) from a number of venture capitalists, including Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital, plus additional investments from Peter Thiel and Accel Partners. The valuation for this round was about $500 million (N200,000,000,000.00).
A leaked cash flow statement showed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net gain of $5.66 million (N2,264,000,000.00).
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A close look at this Facebook example shows one thing: No where would you see that the U.S. government gave a kobo to Facebook. (But it provided an "enabling environment".) All the monies there came from Angel Investors.
Nigerians need a massive mental, mindal shift. More of our millionaires and billionaires MUST see the importance of investing MONEY into homegrown Science and Technology companies.
The general public also needs to be properly informed about this as well. We have very powerful, successful and influential banks today because millionaires, billionaires and the general public rallied together, bought shares, poured money into our homegrown banks. This must also be replicated in our Science and Technology companies. And as we do this, we'll become more self-reliant. We'll have a robust economy. We'll drastically reduce poverty.
