Pre-exit and post-exit founders, operators, and fund principals.
The architecture before the exit, and the architecture after.
Founders and venture principals carry two balance sheets. The first is the cap-table balance sheet — founder shares, vesting schedules, secondary opportunities, and the small allocation of liquid wealth that lives outside the company. The second is the post-exit balance sheet, which arrives in a single transaction and replaces the first overnight.
Most architectures are composed for the second only, after the deal has closed. By that point the structural decisions that mattered most — the LCGE multiplication, the family-trust freeze, the holding-company architecture, the secondary tax treatment — have already been made by default rather than design. The post-exit work is real, but it is the smaller half of the project.
The work is to be on the cap table, structurally, years before the term sheet. To compose the architecture that lets the family receive what the founder built — whether the exit arrives next quarter, in three rounds, or never at all.
Four reviews the next round defers.
Each, attended to before the term sheet, is worth more than a round of recycling.
Founder shares, composed before the round.
The estate freeze on the holding company, sequenced before the next valuation step. Family-trust structures composed when the share value still permits the patient answer. The lifetime capital gains exemption, multiplied across the household where the structure permits. The secondary sale considered as a structural event, not a single transaction.
The exit itself, composed across the windows.
The two years before the transaction, the close itself, and the year that follows. Each window with its own structural questions. The rollover, the holdback, the earnout, the escrow — sequenced against the family’s actual liquidity, the tax position, and the post-exit balance sheet that begins the morning after.
Carry, fund interests, and recycled capital.
Carried-interest structures that work across the fund cycle and across the principal’s own balance sheet. Recycling capital into angel and seed positions on a deliberate cadence rather than as it appears. The portfolio of small private positions held inside structures that survive the principal — not on the personal balance sheet alone.
The post-exit balance sheet, beyond the next round.
The chapter that begins after the founder is no longer operating the company. Liquid capital composed for a horizon that no longer ends at the next milestone. The estate plan rebuilt for the family that exists after the exit, not the family that existed before it. The next chapter — angel, board, or simply the family — composed deliberately rather than discovered.
The cap table now, the post-exit chapter later, the architecture across both.
Year one is the architectural review of the cap-table balance sheet, the holding-company structure, and the family’s position around it. From there, the relationship operates on the rhythm the company permits — proactive ahead of every round, every secondary, every term sheet, and the eventual transaction. Existing corporate counsel and tax counsel continue under their own mandates.
The freeze and the trust were done in the year between Series B and Series C. By the time the strategic offer arrived, the structural work was already in place — the deal team negotiated the deal, not the architecture around it. The post-close year did what it was supposed to do: distribute the cash the structure had already prepared for.
Eleven adjacent audiences.
Most principals belong to more than one. The architecture is composed for the family in front of us; the descriptions below are how families most often arrive.
The Founder’s Chapter
The enterprise, the estate, and the architecture, coordinated in concert.
The Liquidity Event
Approaching, mid-sale, or year one beyond the exit.
The Stewardship Chapter
Families two and three generations into the enterprise and the estate.
The Transition
Widowhood, divorce, inheritance, or the passage to the next generation.
Business Owners & Founders
The founder whose balance sheet lives inside the operating company.
Real Estate Developers & Principals
Entity-dense portfolios, refinancing cycles, and generational passage of the book.
Medical, Dental & Allied Health
Professional corporations, retained earnings, and the practice as an asset.
Legal, Accounting & Finance
Senior professionals whose own architecture is the last to which they have time to attend.
Executives & Senior Corporate Leaders
Concentrated equity, deferred compensation, and the sequencing each requires.
Cross-Border Families — Canada & U.S.
Dual residency, dual citizenship, U.S.-situs assets, and the treaty work.
Women Principals & Female Heads of Household
Founders, executives, widows, and inheritors, engaged on terms of their own choosing.
Philanthropists & Family Foundations
Families for whom philanthropy has moved from line item to operating discipline.
Be on the cap table, structurally, before the term sheet.
A founder’s architecture composed before the next round outperforms an architecture composed after the close. Inquiries are read in confidence and answered within one business day.