Not realistic to maintain control past A unless you built a real rocketship. The board doesn’t usually want to run your company - they have enough other companies, some evidently better than yours as they don’t require this intervention.

> some evidently better than yours as they don’t require this intervention.

I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

Also plenty of companies out there have control past the A.

Most have voting control, subject to certain investor veto powers, after the A. Very few have it after the B.

Isn’t each round 10-20% to investors? Even in the worst case of Seed, A, and B at 20% each, founders still have 80% -> 64% -> 51% ?

And in the best case it’s just one series A taking ~15%, thus founders still have 85%

It can get much worse. Companies can have multiple “seed” rounds. It may not be doing well enough for a real “A” round. The naming of the rounds doesn’t matter. Valuation at each round does. If your valuation goes lower from one round to the next (“down round”) you’ll give up more equity, diluting everyone else faster.

Each round carves out 10+% for employee options, on top of 10-30+% to investors (Seed can be anywhere from 10-30%, Series A is typically 20% to just the lead, Series B 10%+).

Equity ownership and voting control are also different things. After the B you commonly have 2 investors and an independent director on the board, alongside 1-2 founders.