Consumer · Governance
Navigated a founder succession without losing momentum
A founder transition risked stalling the company. We designed the handover and governance around it, so leadership changed and execution did not.
Client Profile
Alaska - A high-growth fintech
A venture-backed fintech operating across three European markets, serving more than 800,000 users. After a strong Series B, the company was scaling fast and preparing to raise again into a market that had sharply turned.
The situation
A high-growth fintech was raising a Series C into a market that had turned sharply against them. After a strong Series B, momentum was on their side, but sentiment had cooled almost overnight. The early term sheets reflected it: punishing dilution, aggressive liquidation preferences, and control provisions that would have left the founders running a company they no longer truly owned.
The challenge
The board was split. One side wanted to accept the hard terms and secure the cash before the window closed. The other wanted to hold out and risk burning through the runway. Both were arguing about the wrong thing. The real question was never how much to raise, it was on whose terms, and how much of the company the founders were willing to give away to get it.
What we did
We reframed the round entirely, moving the founders from a position of weakness into one of genuine leverage. We rebuilt the financial narrative around the fundamentals investors had overlooked, modelled every realistic alternative, and pressure-tested each scenario the founders would actually have to live with for the next five years. Then we did the part most advisors skip: we stayed at the table through the renegotiation, line by line, until the terms reflected the company's real worth.
The outcome
The company closed the round on materially better terms, with dilution and control provisions that protected the founders rather than punishing them. The cap table stayed clean and fundable for the next stage, and leadership kept the authority to run the business their way. Years on, they remain a client, and the decisions made in that room still shape how the company is run today.
Founder & CEO, Lumen Health
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