I assume rich people often keep enough shares to control who sits on the board, and thus who is the CEO. There’s a lot of people sitting on multiple boards, folks know each other, blah blah blah.

Also many shareholders aren’t really involved. I don’t even know how it works if you own shares through Vanguard or something. I’ve never been asked to vote on company policy.

From what I’ve seen in start-up land, leadership is a lot of in-group bro times. It’s all gut feel. Shouldn’t expect rational, honest, decisions from them.