The range is wide. Snapchat cofounders Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy owned a combined 44% of Snapchat before it went public. Mark Zuckerberg owned 31% of Facebook, Sergey Brin and Larry Page owned 31% of Google, the founders of Eventbrite owned 34%, and Reed Hastings owned 24% of NetFlix. These are remarkable levels of CEO ownership upon going public/exit, but such high levels aren’t always the case. Glen Kelman of Redfin owned only 4%, the founder of Pandora owned only 2%, the Lyft founders owned 6% combined, and Peloton’s founder and CEO owned 6%. The range of ownership at exit/IPO can be wide and is dependent on a number of factors, the primary of which are capital efficiency and the ability to command high valuations during fundraising.
Options, smaller investors, and others make up ~30%. Both the median and averages of the founders and VC sum to ~70%. That means smaller investors, employees, consultants and others owned 30% of these businesses at IPO. Scrutinize every little grant, because they add up.
Strategics don’t matter. Of the 198 tech companies in the list, only 31 had a strategic investor (16%).
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