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Comment by ExoticPearTree | Hacker News Reader

This and previous submission about the Automattic board attempt to fire the founder should be used as a lesson that you should never ever give up control of your company to anyone.

Facebook is a good example on how to structure your company to keep control of it.

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And FB is a lesson to a lot of companies and the public not to allow the same dual class stock structure. Zuckerberg can cash out a lot of his equity and still be the controlling force behind FB even though other people "own" a majority stake of the stocks and equity.

> This and previous submission about the Automattic board attempt to fire the founder should be used as a lesson that you should never ever give up control of your company to anyone.

I'm afraid in this case, this "should never" barely makes Mullenweg's top 10.

> Facebook is a good example on how to structure your company to keep control of it.

Yes, there's a lot of lessons we can take away from Facebook. Most are not positive lessons, mind you.

Is your implication that the world is a better place if it is impossible to remove someone like Matt from control of a company?

No, I said it would be better for the founder to not be put in a position where he/she can be fired.

If a founder is going to VCs or the markets in general for funding, there's no way to really do this. I don't see how the vast majority of founders can realistically expect others to fund their companies and still let the founder have the final say on all company matters.

If founders are willing to self-finance or finance based on cash-flow/collateral, that's a different story. But if you're selling majority stakes of your company's equity to others in order to finance your operations and growth, the equity owners should get a majority vote in how your company runs.

> I don't see how the vast majority of founders can realistically expect others to fund their companies and still let the founder have the final say on all company matters.

By not selling the controlling majority stake in their company, or retain super-voting rights. Anything to not give anyone the possibility to take their company from them.

Well, not selling controlling majority stake is fine. What people have issues with are the super-voting rights that where the people owning those rights get to play with other's money with the others not having much say on how that money gets used. E.g. look at meta's VR spending as an example.

The unhappy investors can sell their Meta shares and invest in something else if they don't like it, no? Now, since they are just unhappy but don't sell, it means Meta still makes money for them.

As fou der - yes. The question is if investors accept that gamble.

Facebook, when, Meta took a bunch of bad decisions in recentyears. All that Metaverse is just a write off ... for now the stock market liked the "vision" but that may end.

How willing investor's then are to play such a game is to be seen. I guess this only works in exceptional cases. Facebook was a money printing machine everybody wanted to be a part of.

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