First Round Capital has a big pay day as Uber goes public

Ridesharing giant Uber went public on Friday, which means famed Philly-based seed stage venture firm First Round Capital is seeing dollar signs.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, First Round made a whopping $2.5 billion off of its $510,000 investment — nearly 5,000 times its return. First Round led that funding round in 2010 when Uber was known as UberCab. Since then, the company has completed over 10 billion trips and expanded to more than 700 cities, per First Round’s Friday tweets.

Uber’s stock was initially set at $45 and hit $37.835 on Monday morning.

Philly-based First Round Partner Josh Kopelman — who was recently revealed to be a personal backer of Arlan Hamilton’s Backstage Capital accelerator and also took Philadelphians for free UberX rides when the service launched in 2015  — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s been quite a ride… https://t.co/fIjGjSer4Z pic.twitter.com/cRdnwHQWGi

— Josh Kopelman (@joshk) May 10, 2019

The IPO came just two days after Uber drivers joined with other rideshare contract employees to protest declining wages and working conditions in Philadelphia and two dozen other cities around the world.