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Comment by jackgavigan | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to note that Aaron Levie owns just 4.1% of the company at this point: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1372612/0001193125141...

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That's actually a very interesting point. I know Mark Zuckerberg owned a really big chunk (~30%) of FB when they IPO'd. Anyone with insight know if the norm is closer to Zuckerberg or Levie?

It's closer to Levie. It's very rare for founders to be able to maintain strong control of their company through multiple funding rounds.

It's not too common, but larger amounts aren't unprecedented: two big ones that had even larger ownership were Microsoft (Gates still held 49% of Microsoft at the time of IPO) and Amazon (Bezos & family held 52%, with Bezos himself holding 42%). The Google founders also owned a combined 32% (16% each). Those companies were rather more successful than Box, though.

I think that's generally the rule. The more successful the startup, the larger the stake the founder maintains due to being in a better position in regards to VC rounds.

Had Microsoft raised much funding before the IPO?

Microsoft had so much cash lying around they were using t-bills (or some other kind of bond) as bookmarks (don't remember which Gates bio I read that in -- Hard Drive maybe). When Microsoft IPOed it was basically owned by its founders. It never wanted for cash.

The only VC with an investment in Microsoft was David Marquardt's Technology Venture Investors. At the IPO, TVI owned 6.1% of Microsoft.

The remaining 93.9% belonged to the founders, the Board, the employees, and friends and family. Everyone listed on the S-1, with one exception, took a bit off the top but held on to most of their shares.

The one exception was Bill Gates's sister's trust fund, which owned 20,000 shares -- 0.1% of the company. She could've been a hundred-millionaire if she'd held on to it, but her trustee sold it for $400,000 and moved on.

Zuck is a huge outlier. FB had a $15b valuation by 2009. People were throwing money at him, so he took very little dilution. Also, his control provisions are way more favorable.

Yes, I remember that though his ownership might be ~30%, his voting counts for >50%.

Box comes from a very different situation from the astronomic growth and beast that was pre-IPO FB.

Realize they've raised at least $414M that has been reported.

At many of those rounds it was likely possible for founders/ early employees to cash out options. FB/ Mark had enormous leverage because it was an unstoppable growth machine. Box is a great company, but still has to battle to grow sales into revenue/ profits, as is evidenced by the S-1.

(http://www.crunchbase.com/company/box)

How much does that leave for the avg. employee, many who probably took pay cuts for the promise that their equity would be worth millions?

One of the reasons Levie has so little equity is because of the equity that was allocated to the employees' options pool. I expect the average employee will be quite happy.

What would be a normal percentage for a founder to keep in their company?

If you keep bleeding money and needing more cash influx to extend the runway - then the achieved (and appropriate) percentage rapidly goes to zero.

It varies pretty widely, but Levie's number is on the low side historically for tech companies, particularly for such a relatively young company.

Gates had 45% of Microsoft the day after their IPO. Larry Ellison still owns ~20% of Oracle. Google's founders still have ~10%. David Filo even still has around 9% of Yahoo (Yang & Filo had closer to 20% at the time of the IPO if I recall). Bezos still has around 18% of Amazon. When Dell IPO'd, Michael Dell still owned a huge percentage of the company at IPO, over 40% if I recall (he sold most of it high, which is why before they took Dell private, he was nearly worth more than the company).

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