As a minority shareholder in a closely held prvt co, how can I push for greater transparency and accountability from the controlling shareholder?

I developed and published mobile apps as an individual for several years, and only formed a corporation later as things grew and it made sense. As far as Apple's App Store and Google Play are concerned, you can register as an individual developer without having a corporation. I'd be happy to help further over a call if you have any additional questions. Best of luck with your mobile app!

More of a political answer than anything to be honest. Laws are created by politicians, politicians make their decisions based on lobbyists & public opinion. Lobbyists and public opinion can both be bought. One person only has one vote, a company can persuade millions of votes. Imagine what would happen if Facebook (or Reddit) put a tiny icon that say "Vote ________ for president", how many people that would influence to vote. Businesses are what influence & create laws in the end. Even your personal opinions come from businesses. Is it something you read in a book? Author makes money, textbook makes money. Read it on the internet? The website makes money. Learned it in school? University makes money, professor makes money. A business that is breaking a law is really just fighting the status quo of the established businesses, which might be why often new businesses think or might assume they need to do something illegal to get ahead. While established businesses such as Comcast or Facebook can break laws and it be "legal" (because they do it in the right way of course). But no, entrepreneurs don't need to do illegal things and break the law. Pick a business model, any business model, and then do it better.

Non-disclosure agreements are very common. Know that a non-disclosure agreement goes both ways as well. A contract agreement should also protects you from the other party disclosing any trade secrets or know-hows that they may learn from working with you.

I've discussed ideas with hundreds of startups, I've been involved in about a dozen startups, my business is at $1M+ revenue. The bad news is, there is no good way to protect ideas. The good news is, in the vast majority of cases you don't really need to. If you're talking to people about your idea, you could ask them to sign an NDA ("Non Disclosure Agreement"), but NDAs are notoriously hard to enforce, and a lot of experienced startup people wouldn't sign them. For example, if you asked me to sign an NDA before we discussed your Idea, I'd tell you "thanks, but no thanks". This is probably the right place though to give the FriendDA an honorable mention: http://friendda.org/. Generally, I'd like to encourage you to share your Ideas freely. Even though telling people an idea is not completely without risk, generally the rewards from open discussions greatly outweigh the risks. Most startups fail because they build something nobody wants. Talking to people early, especially people who are the intended users/customers for your idea can be a great way to protect yourself from that risk, which is considerably higher than the risk of someone taking off with your idea. Another general note, is that while ideas matter, I would generally advise you to get into startup for which you can generate a lot of value beyond the idea. One indicator for a good match between a founder and a startup is the answer to the question: "why is that founder uniquely positioned to execute the idea well". The best way to protect yourself from competition is to build a product that other people would have a hard time building, even if they had 'the idea'. These are usually startups which contain lots of hard challenges on the way from the idea to the business, and if you can convincingly explain why you can probably solve those challenges while others would have a hard time, you're on the right path. If you have any further questions, I'd be happy to set up a call. Good luck.

On paper you have the advantage but after several startups control resides in he who knows how to execute the vision of the company.