These LendingClub investors will reap the richest rewards in today's IPO

VC still has the email that introduced her to LendingClub.

She might want to print out that email and have it framed in gold after the return on her investment in the San Francisco online lender soared more than 120-fold in its Wall Street debut on Thursday.

“People thought I was crazy at the time,” Lynn told me in an interview from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. She made the investment for Morgenthaler Ventures in 2009 at 19 cents a share, That makes for a nice multiple, given that LendingClub sold its IPO shares at $15, above its target range, and the company’s stock closed on Thursday as $23. 43.

“I was investing in a consumer credit company in the depths of the credit crisis. No money was moving,” Lynn recalled. “To me it was the best possible time because banks were frozen. I thought there would always be high-quality borrowers that were deserving of loans and the banks wouldn’t be able to service them for some time still. “

Another early investor and fellow LendingClub board member, Norwest Ventures Managing Partner , recalled that LendingClub’s future didn’t seem at all certain just after his firm and Canaan Partners invested in its Series A round in 2007 at 27 cents a share. Their investment today is worth nearly 87 times that amount. England’s influential riff-monsters, deep purple, will join black sabbath and metallica as the hall’s leading emissaries online essay to metal.

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