June 30, 2026
Adapted from a Thelander webinar with Jodie Thelander (J. Thelander Consulting) and Christine Le Young Connors, co-founder of Veritas Strategic Wealth Partners and a 22-year veteran of JP Morgan’s private bank.
For a founder or executive at a private company, compensation and wealth management are two halves of the same problem. What you own, how you own it, and what you can do with it determines how much of your equity actually reaches your family after taxes. This session paired compensation data with wealth-planning expertise to walk through the levers that matter.
What You Own, How You Own It, What You Can Do With It
The recurring theme: most clients still track their wealth in a spreadsheet, unsure of what they own, where it sits, and how it is held — and you cannot build a compensation, tax, or investment strategy without seeing everything in one place. Step one is simply knowing what you hold. ISOs, non-qualified options, and restricted stock all carry different tax treatment and different planning implications, and some equity is transferable while some is not, some already exercised and some not. The nuances — not just the dollar amount — drive the strategy.
Benchmark by Total Financing, and Watch Dilution
Series labels (A, B, C) have gone out the window given how much companies now raise, so total financing raised is the better lens for reading compensation. For a life-sciences CEO, cash rises with financing while equity stays strikingly consistent — and founder equity gets diluted along the way. Non-founder executive equity settles at a stable ~1% at later stages (at both median and 75th percentile), which makes planning around dilution essential rather than optional.
The Three Tax Levers
Wealth planning comes down to three tax levers: estate tax (around 40%), capital gains (in California, roughly 40% combined with state), and ordinary income (more than half in California). The job is mapping everything you own — current valuation, what is vested and unvested, and the mix of shares, ISOs, and non-quals — then choosing strategies that minimize exposure across those three. When a company’s valuation rises, gifting equity off your balance sheet early creates planning opportunities; the risk is always that it doesn’t go “up and to the right,” but when it does, early action pays off.
QSBS, the 83(b) Election, and Keeping It Simple
The 83(b) election paired with early exercise starts the clock on founder equity. QSBS (Qualified Small Business Stock) is a major lever — the exemption recently grew from $10M to $15M, and, importantly, it is the greater of $15M or 10x your basis. One example: a company that flipped from an LLC to a C-corp changed its basis in a way that let the founders offset more. But the panel’s caution was to keep it simple until it needs to be complex. One set of founders had set up four separate trusts for QSBS stacking years before any liquidity event — leaving them with four trustees, four sets of expenses, and four tax returns annually. Pattern recognition from having done it before is what keeps planning clean: their three pillars are clarity, strategy, and legacy.
Early Exercise, Company Loans, and the Power of Asking
Early exercise of options (which enables the 83(b)) is allowed for about 97% of CEOs in the data, but genuinely early-exercisable grants remain rare and are usually reserved for outside recruits or founders getting additional grants. For a young founder without much cash flow, the exercise can be structured as a company loan that becomes forgivable down the road as compensation. The single biggest recommendation: ask. Experienced, repeat CEOs know what to request — early exercise, transferability to family members for gifting, and acceleration — and if a founder doesn’t ask, an outside executive being recruited onto the team will.
Acceleration, IPOs, and M&A
Acceleration on a change of control (single vs. double trigger) is negotiated in the employment agreement. Strategy differs by exit path. Heading toward an IPO, it is a hard time to be a public-company CEO — reporting and disclosure are heavy — so clean up your comp and consider taking some money off the table in a late private round to avoid pressure to sell publicly. In a positive M&A, equity typically carries through per your existing allocation; in a distressed deal, the acquirer often carves out a percentage of proceeds to retain top talent. And a hard-won caution from someone who has sold a company: it is not over until it is signed — do not spend the money you think you will make until the deal closes.
The Bottom Line
Founders — especially first-timers in life sciences — are often reticent to push for their own compensation, feeling it is greedy. It is not: getting the CEO number right level-sets the whole organization, and additional grants down the line are predicated on having set the initial number well. With trillions in liquidity poised to hit the market and the pace of change accelerating (AI rounds are bigger and faster, leaving less time to plan), the advice is to focus on the company while a trusted advisor keeps your financial house in order — because if you pick your head up too late, the planning opportunities are already gone.
This article is adapted from a Thelander webinar and is intended as general educational information, not legal, tax, or financial advice. For guidance specific to your situation, consult qualified compensation, legal, and wealth advisors.