Kevin Systrom (pictured) and Mike Krieger struck gold when they recently sold their 2-year-old photo sharing startup to Facebook in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $1 billion. It was Facebook's biggest acquisition to date -- and the kind of windfall Silicon Valley startups dream about. The deal has grown richer in the five weeks since it was announced: The Instagram crew took home $300 million cash and almost 23 million Facebook shares, a stock stash now worth $874 million. That takes the Instagram deal's value up to almost $1.2 billion.
Systrom and Krieger originally set out to build a Foursquare-like check-in service called Burbn. They "pivoted" toward photo sharing after discovering that's what their users were flocking toward. Instagram attracted 30 million users before Facebook snapped it up.
Facebook's IPO will raise $16 billion, making it the third-largest IPO in U.S. history.
