Equity and liquidity
Your wealth is about to change. Are you ready?
For anyone whose wealth is about to become liquid — an IPO, a company sale, a tender offer, an inheritance, or another sudden change in what the balance sheet looks like.
What we map first
The first job is to name the moving parts.
Each situation is different, but the planning work starts the same way: organize the facts, clarify what the wealth needs to do, and decide which decisions need specialist coordination before acting.
01
Cash reserves for taxes, spending, debt, reinvestment, and future flexibility.
02
Exercise timing, AMT awareness, RSU withholding, lockups, and 10b5-1 planning considerations, where the liquidity comes from employer equity.
03
Business-sale proceeds, inherited assets, or other sudden wealth, where it does not.
04
Tender offers, merger proceeds, separation agreements, and concentrated single-company risk.
Before the event
The planning window is usually before the headline.
IPO, merger, tender, lockup, and separation timelines can compress decisions that are easier to evaluate while there is still time to coordinate records, cash, taxes, and specialist review.
01
Inventory grants and schedules: ISOs, NSOs, RSUs, restricted stock, token grants, vesting dates, cliffs, exercise windows, and post-termination deadlines.
02
Map event timing: tender-offer windows, merger close dates, IPO pricing, lockup releases, 10b5-1 plan windows, secondary-sale limits, and token unlocks where relevant.
03
Separate cash needs: exercise cost, withholding, estimated taxes, AMT exposure, reserves, debt, spending, reinvestment, and near-term flexibility.
However the liquidity arrives
The trigger differs. The questions underneath it rarely do.
An IPO, a company sale, a tender offer, an inheritance, or another sudden change in the balance sheet each arrive differently, and each raises the same underlying set: how much cash is committed before it is spent, what the tax picture looks like in the year it lands, and what the money is now supposed to do.
01
Reserve first: taxes owed, debt, near-term spending, and the flexibility to not decide everything at once.
02
Coordinate with a CPA and, where a sale, estate or entity is involved, an attorney — this planning works alongside their advice rather than replacing it.
03
Write down the policy for what to hold, diversify, reserve, and revisit, so the decision survives the week the money arrives.
Inherited or sold, not vested
Money that arrives at once, with no vesting schedule to pace it.
An inheritance or a completed business sale skips every mechanism that makes equity compensation gradual. There is no lockup, no exercise window and no vesting calendar imposing a sequence, so the whole decision arrives at once — often while the person is settling an estate or leaving a company they built, which is rarely when anyone is best placed to make irreversible choices.
01
Inherited assets generally arrive with a stepped-up cost basis, which changes what selling costs relative to a position built over years — worth establishing before anything is sold, and a question for the estate's tax professional.
02
Estate and beneficiary work belongs with the estate attorney and CPA; this planning coordinates around their advice on trusts, beneficiaries and estate tax rather than substituting for it.
03
Sale proceeds and inherited cash carry no lockup, which removes the deadline pressure of an equity event and replaces it with the opposite problem: nothing forces a decision, so reserves, taxes owed and near-term spending are worth separating before the rest is allocated at all.
04
A decision that can wait a quarter usually should. Documenting what the money is for, and what would have to change to revisit it, is the part that survives the month it arrives.
Dual fluency
Where the liquidity is compensation, equity and tokens belong in one plan.
Some employees have only startup equity. Some have token compensation. Some have both. The planning work should make each asset visible without turning either one into the whole story.
01
Equity-led planning can include exercise strategy, RSU withholding, lockups, tender offers, concentrated single-stock risk, and post-event diversification decisions.
02
Token-aware planning can include vesting, unlocks, wallet access, custody controls, tax timing, and concentration risk inside the same household balance sheet.
03
The output is a written framework for what to hold, diversify, reserve, and revisit, reviewed with tax and legal professionals where those questions apply.
Family wealth
The money usually has a family attached to it.
Family wealth is not a separate category here — it runs through whatever brought you to the event. These are the parts that most often need coordinating when a liquidity event is the starting point.
01
Tax coordination: investment decisions should be coordinated with CPAs and tax professionals before large sales, distributions, gifts, or liquidity events.
02
Estate and succession coordination: beneficiary designations, trust documents, access plans, estate-tax coordination, and family communication should reflect the actual balance sheet.
Mechanics to identify early
These terms do not all apply to every person. They are planning topics to identify and coordinate with qualified tax and legal professionals before an event forces the calendar.
Model tradeoffs before an event sets the timeline.
Coordinate with CPAs and attorneys rather than replacing their tax or legal advice.
Create a written plan for what to hold, diversify, reserve, and revisit.
The offerings page describes event-driven founder, equity-comp, and separation planning as a way to start.
Family wealth
Questions a family plan should answer
Family wealth is rarely its own category — it runs through whichever situation brought you here. These are the questions the planning work is meant to answer, whatever the starting point.
- When can work become optional?
- How should education funding be handled across multiple children?
- How much liquidity should remain available?
- What tax events may need coordination over the next decade?
- What estate documents, beneficiaries, trusts, and access plans need review?
- What insurance gaps could damage the plan?
- How much illiquidity is reasonable?
- How should private investments and capital calls be funded?
- What happens if private investments underperform for a long period?
- How should digital assets fit, if they are part of the balance sheet?
Next step
Start with the path that fits your situation.
Use the diagnostic to organize the facts, or read the deeper capability page if you want more context before starting a conversation.
General information only
This page is educational and is not personalized investment, tax, legal, custody, or estate advice. Advisory services are provided only under a signed advisory agreement. Protocol Wealth coordinates with qualified tax and legal professionals where those questions are involved.
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Other situations
Concentrated Wealth
Concentration can create custody, liquidity, tax, estate-access, and operational questions that traditional planning often misses, and a growth plan should define concentration limits before asset selection.
Founders & Business Owners
A founder plan needs to connect distributions, reserves, exit options, taxes, estate coordination, insurance, and reinvestment.