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
This charter filing is the opening move in Snap Inc.'s path to the public markets: by creating a new class of supervoting shares before pricing the IPO, co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are locking in control ahead of any roadshow scrutiny. The structure was confirmed two months later when reporting showed new investors would get no voting power at all, leaving the founders — holders of just 45% of Snap's stock — with more than 70% of the votes.
The governance design also frames how the company's history is presented to buyers: the IPO filing separately disclosed that Snapchat paid $158M to settle with ousted co-founder Reggie Brown, a reminder that founder equity disputes predate this charter. And once public, the founders signaled they intended to hold rather than monetize their stakes, saying they wouldn't sell shares that year.
First-order effects
- Spiegel and Murphy convert their 45% economic stake into durable majority voting control at listing, insulating every strategic decision from shareholder pressure from day one.
Second-order effects
- Institutional investors face an all-or-nothing choice on the IPO: buy shares with zero voting rights or sit out, which pressures underwriters to price the deal entirely on growth prospects rather than governance.
Third-order effects
- If Snap lists successfully on these terms, it hands other founder-controlled tech companies a template for going public without ceding control — normalizing multi-class charters as the default for high-profile offerings and sharpening the debate over shareholder protections.
The trend: Tech IPOs are shifting toward founder-perpetual control structures, where public-market capital comes decoupled from voting power.