Infographic: Fitbit's Path To IPO

Atish Davda is the CEO of EquityZen.

In what has been a slow jog for technology IPOs in 2015, wearable fitness tracker Fitbit Inc FIT plans to sprint out of the gates with a $790 million offering.

As we've made a habit of doing, EquityZen ran the numbers behind the company's success, and tracked the returns for Fitbit's early investors. A few venture capital investors stand to earn a healthy return on investment, as seen below:

How To Win Friends And Affluence People

In January 2008, founders James Park and Eric Friedman got Fitbit started with a modest $425,000 investment from friends and family. That investment is now worth $204 million: not a bad way to reward the ones that believed in you.

A big VC investor payday.....

True Ventures, SoftBank Capital, and Foundry Group are the big VC winners in Fitbit. In fact, at $20 per share, Foundry Group's investment will be worth over $1 billion. SoftBank poured $15 million into the company's private Series D financing in August 2013, and will generate a 12x return in less than two years.

...but still founder-friendly. 

Not only have the two founders maintained a decent amount of managerial control of Fitbit (James and Eric remain the company's CEO and CTO, respectively), they have kept a healthy percentage of the stock as well. Following the IPO, each founder will retain 10.9 percent of the business, worth $400 million in equity value. That should be enough to raise anyone's heartbeat.

Fitbit Vs GoPro

A number of comparisons have been made to GoPro Inc GPRO, the camera hardware company that went public a year ago and jumped over 100 percent on the first day of trading. We took a look at the revenue multiple that Fitbit would "trade" at, based on various share prices. Keep in mind, GoPro currently trades at about a 5.2x multiple. At $20 per share, Fitbit's revenue multiple of 4.2x looks attractive in comparison:

Revenue Growth

Underlying the valuations for any technology company is that business's ability to grow. And Fitbit has done so at a calorie-burning pace, growing revenue 175 percent in 2014:

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Posted In: NewsIPOsOpinionStartups
Benzinga simplifies the market for smarter investing

Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.

Join Now: Free!

Loading...