Lyft, Inc. last week completed its highly anticipated initial public offering, raising over $2.3 billion at a valuation of approximately $25 billion, and turning its co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer into near billionaires on paper. But that’s not the only reason they’re smiling. Despite owning only 7% of the outstanding pre-IPO shares, Green and
Dual or multi-class capitalization structures generally allow companies to sell large amounts of shares to the public while maintaining control in the hands of the founders and early investors. Popularized by the Google IPO in 2004, weighted voting rights have since been featured in the high profile IPOs of LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Facebook, Fitbit and
Every founder of a growth startup dreams of a big, successful exit — a sale of the company for millions of dollars. But that dream could be shattered if the investors are able to cause the company to be sold prematurely with proceeds only equal to or barely exceeding the investors’ liquidation preferences, leaving little