Rizvi/Sacca, Evan Williams, Spark Capital, USV, Benchmark, DST Among Twitter’s Largest Shareholders

As expected, Twitter’s S-1 was just released, which states that the company is looking to raise as much as $1 billion in a public offering. As with every S-1 filing, the company reports which individuals/firms hold the most shares in the company. According to this table, founder Evan Williams owns 12 percent of the company before the offering. Benchmark and the firm’s partner and board member Peter Fenton owns 6.7 percent. Fellow founder Jack Dorsey owns 4.9 percent and CEO Dick Costolo owns 1.6 percent.

Other stock holders that own 5 percent or more of the company include Rizvi Traverse (which is reportedly backed by Chris Sacca), Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and DST. It’s not clear how much each investor owns specifically.

Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital were Twitter’s earliest institutional investors (USV led the company’s first major round, and Spark Capital led Twitter’s second round), as was Charles River Ventures, who is not listed in the table and put in around $250,000 early on. Benchmark came in at Twitter’s Series C funding.

We’re hearing from a source that Rizvi could own as much as 15 percent of the company. We’re also hearing that after Rizvi, Williams is the next largest single shareholder followed by Benchmark, Spark, USV and then DST. Spark originally owned around 15 percent, as well but sold some of the stake to Rizvi. Other large employee (or former employee) shareholders that were not listed in the table include founder Biz Stone, COO Ali Rowghani, and former General Counsel Alex Macgillivray.

Other things to note from the chart: revenue chief Adam Bain holds less than 1 percent of the company, as do board members Peter Curie, and David Rosenblatt. It appears that other board member Peter Chernin’s shares have not vested.

In terms of salary, Costolo made $200,000 per year (but this was dropped to $14,000 in August of this year); Bain makes $200,000, and SVP of engineering Christopher Fry earn $145,513 yearly. Including stock, Costolo’s total compensation was around $11.5 million, Fry’s was around $10.3 million, and Bain’s was $6.7 million for the year.

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