New Snap Inc. charter filing shows co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy will retain control of the company after IPO via new class of supervoting shares
Alfred Lee / The Information :
Context & Ripple Effects
Snap's charter filing converts what was already an unusually founder-dominated private company into a formally entrenched public one: Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, who own roughly 45% of the stock, would hold over 70% of the votes through a new supervoting class, while new IPO investors get no voting power at all. The filing lands two months before the offering, meaning the structure is set before any buyer can negotiate it.
The governance story compounds Snap's co-founder history: the same IPO filing cycle surfaced the $158M paid to oust Reggie Brown, a reminder that control of this company has been contested before — and that the charter now locks it with the remaining two.
First-order effects
- IPO buyers are being offered shares that carry economic exposure to Snap but zero governance rights, making the offering a pure bet on Spiegel and Murphy rather than a claim on the company.
Second-order effects
- Institutional investors and index funds that normally press for one-share-one-vote must decide whether to buy anyway on growth grounds, weakening their standard leverage at exactly the moment a marquee listing tests how far founders can push dual-class terms.
Third-order effects
- If a deal this lopsided prices well, it becomes the reference point for founder-controlled consumer tech companies going public — capital raised without ceding control, and shareholder-rights pushback shifting from negotiation at listing to regulation and index-inclusion rules afterward.
The trend: Tech IPOs are decoupling ownership from control, with founder-supervoting charters like Snap's turning public listings into capital raises that leave governance untouched.