Dual-class share structures spread from Google across Silicon Valley within a decade

Evidence

Many Silicon Valley founders followed Google’s lead. By 2015, 15 percent of IPOs were introduced with a dual-class structure, compared to 1 percent in 2005, and more than half of those were for technology companies. Most significantly, Facebook’s 2012 IPO featured a two-tiered stock structure that left founder Mark Zuckerberg in control of voting rights. The company then issued nonvoting class “C” shares in 2016, solidifying Zuckerberg’s personal control over every decision. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 325

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to governance debates in the tech/capitalism literature, and to Zuckerberg control discussions in platform regulation scholarship. — connects to: Tech founders control their firms through extreme dual-class voting structures. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1900; Google’s dual-class share structure insulated founders from market and investor pressures — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 322