Clever Founders! Meta uses a dual-class share setup. Even though Zuckerberg owns only about 13–14% of the company economically, he controls around 61% of the voting power.
A board can remove a CEO in theory. In practice, Zuckerberg controls the votes that decide who sits on the board.
Removal only happens if he agrees.
→ Public investors hold Class A shares with one vote each.
→ Mark Zuckerberg holds Class B shares with ten votes each.
Google’s founders built the same protection.
Alphabet has three classes of shares:
• Class A: one vote
• Class C: zero votes
• Class B: ten votes, held mainly by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Together, Page and Brin control over half of Alphabet’s voting power, despite owning a much smaller share of the equity.
They stepped away from daily operations, yet they still control board decisions and long-term direction.
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Ryan AllisMeta can’t fire Zuckerberg. Google can’t fire its founders either. The company structure every founder should know👇
This has nothing to do with personality or fame.
It comes down to structure.
Meta uses a dual-class share setup.
→ Public investors hold Class A shares with one vote each.
→ Mark Zuckerberg holds Class B shares with ten votes each.
Even though he owns only about 13–14% of the company economically, he controls around 61% of the voting power.
A board can remove a CEO in theory. In practice, Zuckerberg controls the votes that decide who sits on the board.
Removal only happens if he agrees.
Google’s founders built the same protection.
Alphabet has three classes of shares:
• Class A: one vote
• Class C: zero votes
• Class B: ten votes, held mainly by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Together, Page and Brin control over half of Alphabet’s voting power, despite owning a much smaller share of the equity.
They stepped away from daily operations, yet they still control board decisions and long-term direction.
Here’s the part most founders overlook.
With this structure, you don’t need to own most of the company to stay in control.
At Alphabet, maintaining roughly 6% ownership with super-voting shares is enough to retain decisive influence.
This structure is not limited to public companies.
Early-stage founders can set up multiple share classes from day one. It is a decision made early and becomes difficult to change later.
Most founders will never be asked, “Do you want control or ownership?”
But the answer is baked into your cap table long before the question is ever asked.
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Today, I run these private communities that might help you:
→ SaasRise: for founders scaling from $1M to $100M
→ GrowthRise: for B2B Sales and Marketing leaders
(link in comments)
