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Elon Musk controls less than 25% of the voting shares of Tesla, yet the company still exists and in fact is thriving.

How many shares of Apple did Steve Jobs control when he was the CEO?

This is just a ridiculous argument that companies can only succeed if the Founders/CEOs have absolute voting control. There are many examples of shareholders being more than happy to put their votes behind whatever the CEO wants as long as they believe in the CEO.

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It's not a binary situation where you either own 51% or not. The larger the share of the company you own, the fewer stakeholders you need to convince to vote in your favor.

e.g. having 49% equity only requires ~2% of remaining shareholders to agree with any of your decisions.

If you're making remotely justifiable decisions, you're likely to get a decent chunk of shareholders supporting pretty much any position.

Also it's common to stack the board with allies who you can trust to vote in your favor/support your decisions.

So doesn't require much equity to have de facto control. But there will likely be a big difference in influence between, say, 10% and 20%

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