Neil Rimer, co-founder of Index Ventures, said Betfair will be one of the firm’s best investments in terms of return multiple. Betfair’s shares traded up 19 percent from its initial public offering price, closing Friday at GBP15.50 on the London Stock Exchange. The firm sold 493,000 shares in the offering for GBP6.4 million, and still owns 2.3 million shares worth GBP35.7 million at the current price.

Betfair’s major shareholders also include SoftBank Corp. and European venture firm Balderton Capital, which sold part of its stake to Softbank for about $554 million in 2006.

Betfair pioneered online person-to-person sports betting by developing the Betting Exchange, a market place that allows consumers to bet at odds sought by themselves or offered by other customers and thereby eliminating the need for a traditional bookmaker. It now has about 3 million registered users betting on sports events and playing online poker and other games.

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The group, which includes former Silicon Valley player Danny Rimer, whom I interviewed in this post yesterday, threw a schmoozy gathering for its tech partners and some of the start-ups it is investing in and the press at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto.

Thus, I decided to play make-an-elevator-pitch with some of the entrepreneurs of the start-ups there, seen in this video. I also talked to Danny Rimer’s two older brothers, also at Index, and included in the video my chat with Neil Rimer, who talked about the difference between doing tech in Europe and in Silicon Valley.