Founder Liquidity Planning
Founder Liquidity Planning helps the founder or programme team create a practical plan for founder liquidity. Within Exit, M&A & Strategic Options, it turns a broad or uncertain area of the venture into a concrete Bertie work product that can be reviewed, improved and reused. The task is intentionally discrete: it should produce a specific artefact, decision, evidence item or risk signal rather than general learning notes.
Define a practical, sequenced plan for Founder Liquidity Planning. The objective is to remove ambiguity around founder liquidity, give the founder a decision-ready output, and make it clear whether the venture should progress, repeat the task with stronger evidence, escalate to expert support, or move into a linked stage.
Bertie or a programme manager assigns Founder Liquidity Planning when the venture needs a decision-ready output for this group. Typical triggers include group-gate reviews, evidence gaps identified by the co-pilot or founder request.
company status; financials; customer contracts; IP/product assets; strategic objectives; specific context for founder liquidity.
Establish the founder's personal financial objectives, target capital realisation amounts, and acceptable timeframes for partial or full exit. Map these targets against current venture growth trajectories, funding cycles, and investor expectations to identify feasible exit windows.
ObjectiveClarifying the goal and decision horizon establishes explicit monetary targets and deadlines for founder capital realisation. This aligns personal equity requirements with venture milestones, ensuring future liquidity mechanisms do not compromise long-term commercial viability.
What's expectedThe founder must document a clear, quantified personal liquidity baseline, detailing target cash sums, minimum acceptable valuations, and primary decision dates. This must be backed by a board-aligned timeline mapping liquidity gates against projected investment rounds or M&A windows.
Open action arrow_forwardConsultant stress-test · 5 questions- 1.What specific financial minimum must you personally realise to consider this liquidity exercise successful?
- 2.Why did you assume the venture's target valuation will align with your desired personal exit window?
- 3.How does your proposed liquidity timeline account for investor lock-ups and institutional board approval?
- 4.What evidence demonstrates that early founder liquidity will not send a negative signal to prospective Series B or C investors?
- 5.How hold-up resilient is your decision horizon if market conditions delay your exit window by 18 months?
- A data-room asset titled Founder Liquidity Planning
- A practical plan with owners, sequencing, assumptions, dependencies, risks and next decision points
- It should update the venture DNA with specific evidence or decisions about founder liquidity, create a visible milestone in the founder journey, and generate one or more recommended next tasks
Bertie co-pilot analyses strategic options, maps acquirers or licensing paths, identifies diligence gaps and recommends preparation or closure actions. For this task, it should focus on founder liquidity, prompt the founder for missing inputs, draft or improve the output, flag weak assumptions, and record the result back into the relevant data-room section.
A mentor or evaluator can review the output at the group gate. Programme managers can require an advisor checkpoint before Bertie moves the venture forward.