LSV 150 People Insights - 2022

Dra­mat­ic increase in women on boards 

As of the month of March 2022, women direc­tors fill 37% of the board seats on the Lon­er­gan SV150. Com­pared to our study of Sil­i­con Val­ley boards pub­lished in our 2015 Who Runs Sil­i­con Val­ley Board edi­tion, this is a huge increase in rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 23 per­cent­age points. A relent­less focus on gen­der diver­si­ty in the Sil­i­con Val­ley has yield­ed a change in recruit­ment at the board level. 

• Board seats filled by women: 157 in mid-2015 ris­ing to 457 today 
• Per­cent women held seats: 14% in mid-2015 ris­ing to 37% today 
• Num­ber of Lon­er­gan SV150 boards with no women direc­tors: 45 in mid-2015 drop­ping to 0 today 

Note: these diver­si­ty sta­tis­tics above do not include the 155 boards seats filled by the CEOs of the LSV150 (147 men and 8 women — there are five com­pa­nies with two male co-CEOs.

More than three times the num­ber of women serv­ing as Board Chairs since our 2015 study

In our ongo­ing analy­sis of gen­der diver­si­ty on the boards of pub­lic tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies in the Sil­i­con Val­ley, we are start­ing to see a note­wor­thy increase in the num­ber of women exec­u­tives tak­ing on the board chair lead­er­ship role. In our 2015 land­mark look at the direc­tors of Sil­i­con Val­ley 150 boards, there were only four com­pa­nies whose boards were chaired by women (see note below).

The table below lists the fif­teen Lon­er­gan Sil­i­con Val­ley 150 com­pa­nies with women Chairs as of March, 2022. 

Note: The 2015 boards chaired by women were: Hewlett Packard (2015 SV#2 chaired by CEO Meg Whit­man); Oclaro (2015 SV#102, chaired by Maris­sa Peter­son); Affymetrix (2015 SV#106) chaired by Jami Dover Nach­steim); and Genom­ic Health (2015 SV#119 chaired by CEO Kim­ber­ly Popovits). Hewlett-Packard was split into two new pub­lic com­pa­nies, with spin-off HPE mov­ing HQ to Texas; Oclaro, Genom­ic Health and Affymetrix have all since been acquired.

Dis­mal num­ber of women CEOs

Since we start­ed track­ing the num­ber of women CEOs of the Sil­i­con Val­ley in 2014, when there were five women CEOs in the SV150, we have not seen any momen­tum behind this met­ric. There are cur­rent­ly only eight women CEOs of the com­pa­nies on our ranking.

This is despite two of our list’s rare women CEO-founders replac­ing them­selves with women CEOs (at LSV#57 Stitch Fix and LSV#70 Sun­run).

Unlike our track­ing of women board direc­tors (see analy­sis above), the num­ber of women CEOs in this rank­ing is not a met­ric with a trend line — the num­ber of women CEOs inch­es up and down a lit­tle each year, but has seen no mean­ing­ful trend­line improve­ment.

The cur­rent eight women CEOs of the Lon­er­gan SV150 are:

• Lisa Su, AMD (LSV #20)
• Jayshree Ullal, Arista (LSV #49)
• Eliz­a­beth Spauld­ing, Stitch Fix (LSV #57), replac­ing woman CEO-founder Kat­ri­na Lake
• Mary Pow­ell, Sun­run (LSV #70), replac­ing woman CEO-founder Lynn Jurich
• Hay­den Brown, Upwork (LSV #114)
• Julie Wain­wright, founder of The­Re­al­Re­al (LSV #118)
• Jen­nifer Teja­da, Pager­Du­ty (LSV #144) 
• Ann Woj­ci­c­ki, founder of 23andMe (LSV#148)
  

The real win­ners — founder-CEOs flour­ish in the Sil­i­con Val­ley 150

The Sil­i­con Val­ley con­tin­ues to be com­mit­ted to Founder CEOs. When we start­ed our analy­sis of the SV150 in 2014, there were 38 com­pa­nies being led by Founder CEOs. Today, that num­ber has grown to an all-time high of 59. Of these, 49 also claimed the role of Chair­per­son of the Board.

Of the 59 Founder CEOs, 32 also enjoy the enhanced con­trol over the enter­prise afford­ed by dual class stock struc­tures, in which insid­ers own vot­ing stock with vot­ing rights mul­ti­ples over the com­pa­ny’s reg­u­lar stock (the mul­ti­ple is usu­al­ly ten to one). This means in ques­tions of board mem­ber­ship, acqui­si­tion, CEO selec­tion, and strate­gic direc­tion, the CEO most like­ly has the vot­ing pow­er to decide issues even with­out the sup­port of oth­er shareholders/​board members.

Founder Job Security

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, all SV150 Founder CEOs enjoy high job secu­ri­ty. Over the time peri­od 2014 to 2022, when an SV150 founder-led com­pa­ny was still on our list, the Founder CEO enjoyed 86% job secu­ri­ty: almost none of them had moved on. And if they had moved on, it was often to the role of ​“Exec­u­tive Chairman.”

For non founder-led com­pa­nies from 2014, the CEO from 2014 had been replaced 63% of the time.

Ampli­fy the vote — founder-led IPOs hang onto ​“super-stock” vot­ing structures

Accord­ing to Jay Rit­ter of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, 54 tech com­pa­nies in the US went pub­lic in 2021 using dual class stock struc­tures. Com­pa­nies with this type of struc­ture have a sep­a­rate​“super-vote” class of stock typ­i­cal­ly con­trolled by insid­ers only, and are very pop­u­lar in the tech world.

This year the num­ber of Lon­er­gan SV150 com­pa­nies uti­liz­ing a dual class stock own­er­ship (DCSO) struc­ture climbed from 29 to 37. This growth is a func­tion of its pop­u­lar­i­ty with new IPO CEO-founders. Near­ly three-quar­ters of the new IPOs that hit the list this year employ a DCSO struc­ture, and all but one are founder-led.

New­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies using DCSO (12 of 17)

1. AppLovin (LSV #53) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Adam Firoughi
2. Roblox (LSV #63) direct list­ing 2021 under CEO-founder David Baszucki
3. Robin­hood (LSV #66) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Vlad Tenev 
4. Mar­qe­ta (LSV #119) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Jason Gardner
5. Con­flu­ent (LSV#126) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Jay Kreps
6. Nerd­Wal­let (LSV#129) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Tim Chen
7. Fresh­works (LSV#132) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Rath­na Mathrubootham
8. HashiCorp (LSV#141) IPO 2021 under CEO David McJan­net (not called founder)
9. Hims & Hers Health (LSV#144) SPAC 2021 under CEO-founder Andrew Dudem
10. thredUP (LSV#146) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder James Reinhart
11. Git­Lab (LSV#145) IPO 2021 under CEO-founder Systse Sijbrandij
12. 23andMe (LSV#147) SPAC 2021 under CEO-founder Ann Wojcicki

By con­trast, just one of the CEOs at recent IPOs NOT employ­ing a DCSO struc­ture was called a founder. 

New­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies not using DCSO (5 of 17)

1. Infor­mat­i­ca (LSV #75) IPO 2021 under CEO Amit Walia
2. Ude­my (LSV #111) IPO 2021 under CEO Gregg Cocari
   
3. Sam­sara (LSV #122) IPO 20221 under CEO-founder San­jit Biswas 
4. Cours­era (LSV#123) IPO 2021 under CEO Jef­frey Maggioncalda
5. Charge­Point (LSV#149) SPAC 2021 under CEO Pasquale Romano

Note: In cas­es where a new­ly pub­lic com­pa­ny has not pub­lished a full Proxy state­ment, the source for DCSO sta­tus comes from press releas­es and oth­er media coverage

The core pop­u­lar­i­ty of DCSO derives from how it enables founders to stay in con­trol, some­thing that can be a bit more prob­lem­at­ic when tech com­pa­nies go pub­lic with a struc­ture of ​“one share-one vote.”

Of the 37 com­pa­nies on the LSV150 with DCSO struc­tures, 32 (86%) have founders in the role of CEO. The DCSO com­pa­nies with non-founder CEOs are Alpha­bet (LSV#2) with CEO Sun­dar Pichai; Bio-Rad (LSV#50) with CEO Nor­man Schwarz who is a fam­i­ly mem­ber of the founders; Stitch Fix (LSV#57) with CEO Eliz­a­beth Spauld­ing; Dol­by Labs (LSV#82) with CEO Kevin Yea­man; and HashiCorp (LSV#141) with CEO David McJannet. 

Read the 2022 LSV150 com­pa­ny insights for more about LSV 150 finan­cial met­rics, IPOs, acqui­si­tions, and com­pa­nies mov­ing their headquarters…