Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann's shares could retain their high-vote status up to a year-and-a-half after his death.Pinterest's S-1, publicly filed on Friday, revealed a unique share structure.
That phrase is part of Pinterest's description of its planned dual-class stock structure, which gives 20 votes per share to select Class B shareholders — which will likely include the founding team and some of the company's earliest investors. When investors buy Pinterest's stock after the IPO, they will buy Class A shares, which have just one vote per share.
"It's typically driven by the founder's desire to have meaningful influence on the vote post-IPO," he said. , also has a dual-class structure — to the benefit of founding CEO Eric S. Yuan, who owns 22% of the company.Typically in companies with dual-class structures, founders and early investors own Class B stock, which can have anywhere from 10 to 100 times the number of votes-per-share as the Class A stock, the type issued to retail investors after the IPO.