Snapchat's Disappearing Votes

When Alphabet (parent company of Facebook) Google and Facebook went public, the founders of each, Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, wanted to maintain control of their respective companies. To accomplish, they created Class A shares, which have one vote and were sold to the public, and Class B shares, which have 10 votes per share. This effectively allowed the founders to control all decisions made by the company. One drawback is that as the companies grew and needed to issue more shares for employee stock options and acquisitions, the number of A shares grew, diluting control of the companies. Now, Snap, the parent of disappearing message app Snapchat, is planning an IPO and it appears that the company is going even further: It has been reported that the IPO will offer shares with no voting rights. All voting shares will be retained by the co-founders Evan Speigel and Bobby Murphy, who will retain 70 percent of the votes in the company.