Research, commentary, and the occasional math problem from the Rising Tide team — on power-law venture, founder liquidity, and what an asset manager built for the post-AI world looks like.
When a company gets hot, its carefully built cap table starts to unravel — right as an IPO comes into view. The squeeze hits on three fronts at once. Here's how the best operators get ahead of it.
The founder takes the most risk, works the most hours, and stands last in line to get paid. Everyone else at the cap table negotiated themselves a floor. Here's the case that founders should too.
The most common pushback we hear on founder downside protection is that it dulls the incentive to perform and makes founders soft. The venture math says the opposite — it actually makes them more likely to succeed. And so does the academic literature.