Public companies legally have to "increase shareholder value." If they don't, the shareholders can revolt. Private companies aren't beholden to this mandate.

Public companies legally have to "increase shareholder value." If they don't, the shareholders can revolt. Private companies aren't beholden to this mandate. Nor are Google and Facebook, which structured their public stock offerings to keep the founders in charge. Apple was an odd outlier in that the stock holders had complete trust in Steve Jobs to ultimately increase the stock value long term, so let him spend the money on R&D as he saw fit. How many public companies not structured like Google or Facebook are like that?