News 1 | Most Big Private Tech Firms Fall Far Short on Governance

The Information, a subscription-based digital media company with a mission to deliver important, deeply reported stories about the technology business, published a story yesterday about the corporate governance features of 30 prominent venture-backed private U.S. tech companies (subscription required). The article gathered more than 1,000 data points on these companies and found that many of these companies failed to disclose basic information, let founders exercise outsize control and had little independence or diversity on their boards.

Evan Epstein, the Founder and Managing Partner of Pacifica Global, was quoted as saying "Silicon Valley has a governance problem” (...) “You see these companies that look very much like public companies, and this is where the void is. We’ve allowed the evolution of these private markets and private companies to [have] billion-dollar valuations, hiring thousands of workers and being in the stage where they believe they don’t owe anything to anybody.”

Alfred Lee, the author of the article, has done a great job reporting and writing about private tech companies, particularly regarding some of its more obscure features. 

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Pacifica Global was founded in San Francisco to serve as a leading corporate governance advisory firm. The mission of Pacifica Global is to help public and private companies solve some of their most complex corporate governance conflicts and challenges.