Silicon Valley Investors Flexed Their Muscles in Uber Fight<br />“Because companies have been able to raise capital from all of these sources at high valuations, there has been a delay in the growing-up process,”<br />said Jeffrey Bussgang, a general partner at the venture firm Flybridge Capital Partners and a professor at Harvard Business School.<br />“There’s no question that founder power peaked in 2015<br />and we’ve been two years into normalizing,” said Paul Martino, a partner at the venture firm Bullpen Capital.<br />In 2016, $333.5 billion was directed into the venture capital industry, compared with $213.7 billion<br />in 2006, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook.<br />The percentage of company financing rounds that gave extra voting rights to founders<br />and early investors nearly doubled from 2014 to 2016 — to about 39 percent, from 20 percent — according to data from the law firm Fenwick & West.<br />At Uber, Mr. Kalanick may have had a path to outvoting the investors who asked for his resignation, including<br />Benchmark, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, Menlo Ventures and Fidelity Investments.<br />When venture investors become board members at a very young company, they can think about their funds and founders first,<br />but later on they have fiduciary responsibility to all shareholders, Mr. Bussgang said
