I've just read a book where the author is a successful entrepreneur, but a greedy sod too. He stresses that ownership is not the important thing, but the ONLY thing that matters. Taking into account that he started up in the 70s and it wasn't a technology company, he got away with owning 100% of the company's equity - and still does today.

I've never heard of this happening: all the best technology companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, HP etc.) split the equity at the very beginning fairly evenly.

Is this even possible today to own a company outright with web startups, or is it even a good idea?