01 · Exits & Liquidity
How SpaceX's staged IPO lockups released 911.5 million shares, why the stock rose anyway, and what founders should map before calling an IPO a liquidity event.
Governance
A founder can own most of the company and still lose a decisive vote. Map board seats, stockholder votes, appointment rights, and investor consents before your seed round closes.
10 min read · July 29th, 2026
AI infrastructure can create enormous value while early shareholders lose. How debt deadlines, dilution and rescue terms decide who owns the eventual profits.
Ungranted option pool shares usually receive no acquisition consideration, but the pricing concession they created at financing survives to closing. Model the pool twice.
How Chinese VC redemption clauses can turn a missed IPO into founder personal liability, court enforcement, and spending restrictions, plus what to negotiate before signing.
Pierre Castel's Singapore fund and Luxembourg holding chain were built to prevent an heirs' war. Three shareholder votes later, nobody can say who runs the group.
LVMH shows why preserving family ownership does not choose the next chief executive. Separate inheritance, control, board authority, and the operating job.
Cloudflare borrowed $2.5 billion at a 0% coupon, spent $259.5 million limiting dilution, and showed founders where the real cost of convertible debt sits.
Cloudflare's Series FF and Class C plan shows how a board can replace an ownership sunset while preserving founder liquidity and voting control.
Calculate what each post-money SAFE sells, how stacked caps and pro rata rights change the next round, and which cap-table scenarios to run before accepting another cheque.
Calculate 1x non-participating, participating, multiple, and senior liquidation preferences before a sale turns the headline price into a very different common-stock payout.
See how a pre-money option-pool top-up changes founder dilution, calculate a 10% post-close reserve correctly, and negotiate the pool from a real hiring plan.
Five seed-stage mistakes that can cost founders their equity, company control, and personal assets, with real cases and a document-by-document audit.
A $465 million sale that paid the founders zero, a court that called it entirely fair, and the arithmetic that turns a decade of your life into a below-market engineering salary.
How down rounds, structured bridges, warrants, and option pools change founder ownership and voting control, with a clearly labeled worked hypothetical.