One of Robinhood’s first investors is the son of a Silicon Valley legend. Here’s how he turned his firm’s first $250,000 check into $300 million.

• In 2013, Chad Byers had just raised his first fund when he met the cofounders of Robinhood.
• Byers knew that Robinhood had met with close to 100 other seed investors, who had turned them down.
• But Byers ended up making a $250,000 investment, a stake now worth upwards of $300 million.

Chad Byers was desperate to prove he could make it as a successful investor after living under the shadow of his father, Brook Byers, a founder of legendary VC firm Kleiner Perkins.

In 2013, he had managed to raise his first fund at Susa Ventures, a San Francisco-based seed stage firm, and knew he wanted to make early bets in fintech. He thought stock trading was a good place to start.

A few months after opening his firm, Byers agreed to meet the cofounders of Robinhood, an online trading platform aimed at millennial and Gen Z investors, at the famed Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park. After that meeting, Byers ended up writing a $250,000 check, which he says with Robinhood going public Thursday, is worth upwards of $300 million.