In its 5th filing with the SEC, Palantir finally admits it is not a democracy

techcrunch.com

11 points·thesausageking··4 comments

How is this much different from BRK.A and class B super-voting shares for Facebook, Pinterest, Shopify, and Alphabet? It's certainly more byzantine, but the end result is the same: founders and insiders ensure majority governance and retain control over their company.

It's up to investors to determine whether this is good or bad.

It's hilarious and probably terrible for society that you can sell your company but still control it. The most powerful companies become even less accountable to anyone. If you buy a share in an active business, sure the amount of control that share represents was factored into the share price. But it is still slightly absurd that these companies with zero accountability are allowed to be traded on public markets.

Here's a pretty detailed argument against dual-class shares from the UPenn law review: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

I’m rather happy to own shares in companies run by the founder with ambitious growth over those run by a career CEO who wants to grow revenue 5% y/y and nothing else.

While it’s true CEOs left unchecked engage in “empire building”, it’s also true that shareholders tend to suffer from short term thinking: money now is better than money later. The result is a lot of short term investments and a lack of 20 year planning.

I guess they are only looking for silent partners? ;)

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