[brockwhittaker]

Not all shares have voting power, and even so the voting power of those shares (if they were 2% of the company for example) may be proportionally tiny compared to the founders/board/execs.

For example shareholders don't have any control at FB, since Mark controls 51% of the voting power.

[YZF]

It's fairly unusual to have companies with this sort of structure. Why would you ever buy shares in a company that doesn't pay dividends and where you can get infinitely diluted and have no control? (other than for speculative reasons)

[astrange]

Discounted future cash flow includes all of dividends, possible future acquisition, and greater fools buying it from you. The last one being what drives Tesla and cryptos.

[phonon]

NYSE: SNAP ("Snapchat") listed shares have no voting rights, and they seem to be doing okay.

[bhk]

And GOOG seems to be doing okay.

[entangledqubit]

Amusingly, the voting shares are currently worth less than the nonvoting.

[sn_master]

I just checked and you are right (1835 vs 1827). Funnily, there is this:

"but unlike common shares, they do not confer voting rights to shareholders. As a result, these shares tend to trade at a discount to Class-A shares. "

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052615/whats-differ...

[bhk]

They should issue a class of shares that are guaranteed to never pay a dividend or be redeemable for anything. Maybe they will trade even higher!

[recursive]

Maybe the future potential of dividends?

[echelon]

> doesn't pay dividends

Tech/growth doesn't pay dividends as dividends are a signal your business is done growing. Dividend companies would rather return capital to investors than place more bets and keep growing.

Tech and growth stocks have minted many millionaires. And sometimes overnight.

This is also why growth companies sometimes don't reach profitability. They're spending their revenue eating the rest of the market and gaining monopoly.

> no control?

People that invested in Facebook made lots of money. They were probably fine with the arrangement. If they stop being fine with it, the stock price will decline.