Field note · October 2026

Why the advisor conversation starts too late

Most founders think the moment to find a wealth advisor is after the wire lands — once the deal has closed and there's an actual number sitting in an account. By then, the decisions worth the most money have already been made by someone else.

How the proceeds get structured — rollover equity, earnout timing, installment-sale elections, qualified small business stock exclusions — isn't decided by a wealth manager after the fact. It's decided in the deal documents, usually by a lawyer and an accountant moving fast under deadline, with no one in the room whose job is to think three years past the closing date.

By the time most founders start "shopping" for an advisor, the decisions worth the most money have already been made by someone else, under someone else's deadline.

The advisors who do this well know the real window isn't the sale — it's the six to twelve weeks before it, while the structure is still negotiable. The ones who wait for a referral after closing are competing for a client already locked into choices nobody optimized for them. The ones who get introduced earlier are the ones actually shaping the outcome.

That gap — between when the money moves and when the advice should have started — is the whole reason this kind of introduction has to happen on a clock, not through a cold inbound months later.

- Haitem Bounaim routes between companies in liquidity transitions and the advisors who can get there before the structure is locked.