Instagram Investor: The Company Sold 'Completely Prematurely' (FB)
Sequoia Capital's Doug Leone was an Instagram investor for only a couple of days before Facebook swooped in and bought the photo-sharing company for $1 billion in April.
His firm had just led a $50 million investment in the company, in a cash-and-stock that valued Instagram at $1 billion (before Facebook's cratering share performance after its IPO tanked the value of its stock).
Instagram "sold completely prematurely," Leone told VentureWire. “A billion dollars sounded great to the founders. Imagine what Instagram could be. It could be the next Facebook on the mobile phone.”