Snap said in the IPO registration document published on Thursday it would become the first US company to go public with shares on offer not granting voting rights to stock market investors. Its founders, Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, will keep control of the company. Snap could be valued at between $20 billion to $25 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. That would give the company the richest valuation in a US technology IPO since Facebook Inc. Snap, which launched itself in 2012 with an app that sends disappearing messages, rebranded itself last year as a camera company and started selling $130 video camera glasses. It generates the majority of its revenue from advertising, seeking to challenge the dominance of internet giants such as Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google. "The industry has been crying out for new advertising units" says Ian Schafer, founder and chairman of ad agency Deep Focus, referring to the tight hold Facebook and Google have on the digital advertising marketplace. In its IPO registration document, Snap cited Apple Inc, Google, Twitter Inc, Facebook and its photo-sharing platform Instagram as its competitors.

Tight Control
Spiegel, the 26-year-old Snap co-founder, last year earned $503,205 in salary, with a $1 million bonus. Imran Khan, Snapchat's chief strategy officer whom it hired from investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG in 2014, earned $241,539 last year with a $5.2 million bonus. In 2015, Khan also received $145.3 million worth of Snap shares as a sign-up bonus. Spiegel and Murphy will maintain tight control over Snap's stock through a unique three-share class structure. The structure will give Spiegel and Murphy the right of 10 votes for every share. Existing investors will have one vote for each of their shares, while new investors will have no voting rights. Snap said it couldn't predict if the structure would "result in a lower trading price or greater fluctuations" in the stock. Keeping tight control is common in companies closely associated with their founders, who often prefer to grow their business without being questioned by a broad array of investors. Still, offering a class of stock with no votes in an IPO is unprecedented. Though the structure has drawn some criticism for not giving stock market investors the opportunity to have input, some people close to the company have argued that investors can "vote with their feet" by not buying into the IPO if they are not comfortable with the arrangements.