[bri3d]

"Headed into an IPO" says "interest in selling" to me - it's a relative rarity to IPO a company while still maintaining a personal controlling interest. I guess it's just a difference in semantics.

(updated to clarify that I meant a personal controlling interest)

[true_religion]

Don't the founders of Google maintain a controlling interest in the company, even now so many years after IPO?

I think a common tactic is to sell preferred non-voting stock during IPO, and retain voting stock for the founders. They get to keep control of the company, in exchange for standing last in line during a possible liquidation.

[bri3d]

Google maintain a controlling interest, but the founders themselves don't. I believe at IPO the founders controlled about 37.6% of the votes in Google and the board controlled 61.4%. So Google still got to direct Google (rather than their public investors), but the founders personally could be overrun by the board.

Facebook is one of the very few companies I can think of which is IPOing with a personal controlling interest from a founder.