No wonder they call him the godfather.
When Twitter was barely a twinkle in co-founder Jack Dorsey’s eye, New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson, a managing partner in Union Square Ventures, was one of the few investors to see its potential to change the world — and make a lot of money in the process.
To hear Dorsey tell it this year at an event at New York University, Wilson was quick to grasp the power of the microblogging platform, which has an estimated 500 million users worldwide.
Now, Wilson — known as New York’s tech godfather — is among the earliest Twitter backers set to cash in on the company’s public debut.
Wilson invested in Twitter in 2008, when its value was pegged at around $100 million. Today, analysts say the IPO could value Twitter at a whopping $10 billion.
Along with Wilson, other early investors include Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
For Wilson, it caps a run that few venture capitalists could match. Already this year Tumblr, which he also scouted early, became the biggest VC-backed exit in the city, selling for $1.1 billion to Yahoo!
“Wilson’s performance is almost the best run of anybody in five or seven years,” one co-investor in Twitter told The Post.
Union Square also has investments in New York startups like Kickstarter, Etsy and Foursquare. In addition, Wilson has shown impeccable timing in exiting his investments.
Although Zynga’s stock is trading at $3, Wilson made tens of millions of dollars selling the stock when it was still trading above $12.
It is unclear how big Union Square’s stake is in Twitter, but there is no doubt that Wilson made money. The firm already sold some stock two years ago in a corporate shakeup that saw Wilson leave the board.
Details aren’t available on what investors stand to make because Twitter filed for its IPO under the new JOBS Act that allows it to keep the financial information secret until 21 days before its “road show.” What is sure is that its revenue is less than $1 billion, allowing it take to advantage of the confidential filing rule.
Since its founding in 2006, Twitter has raised more than $1 billion in venture capital and private stock sales. Union Square participated in Twitter’s first three funding rounds that helped the company raise upward of $50 million.
Dorsey, the lone co-founder on Twitter’s board, reportedly owns around 10 percent of the company, which would make him a newly minted billionaire.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is said to own north of 30 percent, which would make his fortune worth $3 billion come IPO time. Biz Stone owns a smaller stake but could still top $1 billion.
Left out of the Twitter windfall is the fifth co-founder, Noah Glass, who fled the company shortly after its founding and could have nothing to show for it.