[ardit33]

Board seats are part of bargaining chip during funding rounds.... they are very very important.

If you lose control of the board as a founder, you basically are another employee at the company, at the mercy of your investors, who can choose to bring "adult" supervision anytime they seem it is fit to them.

Having the founders control of the board did well to both facebook and google on the long term. On the other hand you have Twitter where nobody is in real control of it, and it ended up with no clear direction.

[kuschku]

This gets especially interesting when you start to expand into Europan countries, and suddenly large amounts of the board seats are elected by the employees (usually a similar amount is chosen by investors and by employees).

This is something that seems to be missing in the US.

[smokeyj]

> and suddenly large amounts of the board seats are elected by the employees

Any stats or info on this? Would be interested to find out more.

[ahartman00]

not eu as a whole, but in Germany, "The law allows workers to elect representatives (usually trade union representatives) for almost half of the supervisory board of directors"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

[cbtacy]

So you're saying Uber would have been in worse shape if the founders had been replaced by adults?

[spitfire]

Not that I'm totally agreeing with him. But we saw how the "adults in the room" approach worked in the first dotcom bubble.