A Wealth Operating System for Founders with $5M–$50M in Liquid Assets
If you have between $5 million and $50 million in liquid assets, you’ve probably noticed something: the wealth management industry doesn’t know what to do with you.
Below $5 million, retail solutions work fine. A roboadvisor, a decent financial planner, your bank’s premier tier. Nothing sophisticated, but it gets the job done.
Above $100 million, you get institutional everything. Dedicated teams, bespoke structures, tier-one private banks competing for your business. J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s minimum is $10 million, but its full suite of services really kicks in at that level. Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management also requires $10 million, and charges fees ranging from 0.75% to over 2% depending on the complexity of your situation. At those levels, the economics work—they can afford to build infrastructure around you.
But between $5 million and $50 million (or even $100m)? You’re too wealthy for the basic stuff and not wealthy enough for the institutional machinery. This is exactly where most founders land after a successful exit.
What happens next is predictable. You cobble things together.
An investment account here, a pension there. A private deal a friend brought you. Some crypto you bought in 2017 that’s now meaningful. A tax advisor who’s never spoken to your investment manager. A legal structure your accountant suggested and that your lawyer doesn’t fully understand. Documents scattered across email, Dropbox, and a folder somewhere on your laptop you’d struggle to find.
It’s not a system. It’s sediment—layers accumulated over time without anyone looking at the whole picture.
This playbook is for: Founders with $5M–$50M liquid (broadly relevant up to ~$100M), multi-account complexity, alternative investments, cross-border elements, or situations where you’re still actively operating while also managing capital.
Probably not for you if: You have under $2M liquid, everything sits in a single investment account and pension, you’re happy fully outsourcing to one adviser, or your financial life is genuinely simple.
The Family Office Question
More founders are talking about family offices. The term has become aspirational—a marker that you’ve “made it.” The good news: technology has significantly reduced the cost of sophisticated wealth infrastructure. You don’t need $250 million to run something that resembles a family office anymore.
But there’s a question worth asking before you go down that path: do you actually need one?
I’ve watched business owners proudly say that they’re “setting up a family office” without being able to articulate what problem they’re solving. When pushed, the answer is often some version of “my friends have one” or “it seems like the thing to do at this level.” That’s not a strategy. It’s expensive mimicry, the status game.
I’ve also seen the opposite mistake. Those who went straight for institutional-grade infrastructure—prime brokerage accounts, complex entity structures, the full shebang. Then reality set in. They weren’t trading frequently enough to justify prime broker minimum fees (Morgan Stanley’s starts at around $5 million AUM; Goldman’s is higher). They were paying $60,000+ annually in maintenance costs for structures that served no practical purpose. Within two years, they’d unwound most of it.
The goal isn’t to have a family office. The goal is to have the right infrastructure for your actual needs. No more, no less.
What This Playbook Covers
This playbook walks through each component of a founder’s wealth operating system.
Chapter 1: What a Family Office Actually Does. The five core functions every family office performs, regardless of scale.
Chapter 2: Three Operating Models for Sub-$100M. Coordinated Network, Virtual Family Office, and Lean SFO—with cost comparisons.
Chapter 3: Structure—The Foundation. Holding companies, SPVs, trusts, and jurisdiction selection at different wealth levels.
Chapter 4: Treasury—How Money Moves. Banking tiers, multi-currency, cash management, and securities-based lending.
Chapter 5: Portfolio Construction for Founders. The Core-Satellite framework and building portfolios that leverage founder advantages.
Chapter 6: Income Generation Strategies. The Income Floor concept and funding life without depleting your growth engine.
Chapter 7: Building Your Advisory Team. Who you need, how to evaluate them, and how to make them work together.
Chapter 8: Protection—Keeping What You’ve Built. Asset protection, insurance, cybersecurity, and succession planning.
Chapter 9: Governance and Decision-Making. Systems for making decisions and avoiding emotional mistakes.
Chapter 10: Implementation Principles. Sequence, pacing, and milestones for putting this into practice.
Chapter 11: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Predictable errors that destroy wealth, with prevention strategies.
Where to Start
Not sure where to begin? Start with the guide that matches your situation:
Just Had an Exit? The First 90 Days. What's urgent, what can wait, and what to avoid entirely in the window after liquidity.
Exit on the Horizon? Pre-Exit Planning. The 12-18 months window. What's possible now that won't be later.
Already Have Infrastructure? Audit What You Have. Signs it's working, signs it needs change, and how to evaluate.
Feeling Overwhelmed? The Minimum Viable Setup. Strip away complexity. What you actually need — and permission to stop there.
Want the Quick Reference? One-Page Framework. The entire playbook condensed. Principles, questions, warning signs. Bookmark this.
Why Standard Advice Fails Founders
The wealth management industry was built for corporate executives or high-earners—people who accumulate wealth slowly through salaries, max out their pension contributions, and retire at 60. The entire infrastructure assumes that trajectory. That’s not how founders work.
You made money fast, through concentrated equity in something you built from zero. You didn’t diversify your way to wealth. You took a massive bet on yourself and it worked. Now everyone’s telling you to do the opposite of what got you here.
This is where people get confused about concentration and diversification. They’re two sides of the same coin: you create significant wealth through concentration (risk), and you protect wealth through diversification.
The advice feels off because it is off.
The advice is generic. “Diversify across asset classes” ignores everything specific to your situation—your concentrated position, liquidity timeline, private market exposure, international complexity, tax residency, family dynamics.
The advisors haven’t done what you’ve done. Most wealth managers have never built a company, never managed a cap table, never experienced going from $2 million to $20 million in a few years. They understand portfolio theory. They don’t understand founder reality.
The incentives are misaligned. Wealth managers get paid on assets under management. Most want your money in their products. They can’t advise on things their compliance hasn’t approved.
There’s nothing wrong with that model—it works for most people. But you’re not most people, and it wasn’t designed for how you got here.
The Fragmentation Tax
There’s a hidden cost to the cobbled-together approach. Call it the fragmentation tax.
It’s not a line item on any statement. It’s the aggregate cost of uncoordinated wealth management:
Tax inefficiency from advisors who don’t coordinate. One sells a position while another is harvesting losses. One recommends an investment structure without understanding the tax implications your accountant would have flagged.
Opportunity cost of assets in suboptimal places. Cash earning nothing in one account while you’re paying margin interest in another. Nobody’s looking at the whole picture.
Risk exposure from gaps nobody noticed. Insurance that hasn’t scaled with your wealth. Estate documents that don’t reflect your current structure. Maybe you work in tech, so you already have high exposure—then investing in S&P 500 (with its heavy tech weighting) adds concentration risk you didn’t intend.
Mental overhead of coordinating it yourself. The cognitive load of being the only person who sees the full picture.
This fragmentation tax can run between 0.5% and 2% annually in aggregate—drag never visible on a single statement but potentially adding up to millions over a decade.
Here’s a number that should concern you: research from Owner.One’s Penguin Analytics surveyed 13,500 wealth owners with $3M–$99M across 18 countries. They found that 74.6% of families lose a portion of their wealth during generational transitions, with average capital erosion of 31%!!! The primary cause wasn’t market volatility—it was poor documentation, unstructured processes, and a lack of asset visibility. Critical details about holdings sit with the founder and aren’t transfer-ready for spouses or heirs.
What a Family Office Actually Is
The term “family office” conjures images of old money, armies of staff, private jets, champagne for breakfast. Think Succession series.
This makes the concept seem irrelevant to founders with $10 or $50 million. It also obscures what a family office actually is.
Strip away the preconceptions and a family office is simply a wealth operating system—a coordinated approach to managing your financial life. It’s not about status. It’s about having the right infrastructure for your situation.
Think about running your money like running a business. All components need to work together.
The Five Core Functions
Every family office—whether a billionaire’s staff of twenty or a founder’s coordinated network—performs five functions:
1. Investment Management and Oversight. Asset allocation, manager selection, performance monitoring. The question isn’t just “what should I invest in?” It’s “who ensures all my investments work together?”
2. Tax Planning and Compliance. This is where significant value is created or destroyed. A 10% return taxed at 45% leaves you with 5.5%. An 8% return taxed at 20% leaves you with 6.4%. Structure determines which scenario you’re in.
3. Estate and Succession Planning. What happens when you’re no longer around—or incapacitated?Changing your structure Most founders delay this indefinitely. The cost of poor estate planning can dwarf any investment loss.
4. Risk Management and Insurance. Protecting against catastrophic events that could destroy wealth regardless of how well it’s invested. The threats have evolved—today, digital threats are among the leading causes of direct wealth loss.
5. Administration and Reporting. The unglamorous function that makes everything else work. Consolidated reporting, entity maintenance, document management, coordination.
These functions aren’t independent. Changing your structure affects your tax position, investment access, estate plan, and administration. Most wealth advice treats these as separate conversations. That’s why it fails.
Three Operating Models
Hiring a team of dedicated staff doesn’t make economic sense until you’re well above $100 million. Below that, three models have emerged.
Model A: The Coordinated Advisor Network
Best for: $5M–$15M | Lower complexity | Single or dual jurisdiction
You assemble independent specialists: tax advisor, estate attorney, investment platform, insurance broker. Each handles their domain. You serve as the quarterback.
The key word here is “coordinated.” Having advisors isn’t enough. Many founders have advisors who’ve never spoken to each other. That’s not a network—it’s silos.
Typical cost: 0.5–0.8% of assets annually | Your time: 5–10 hours per month
Model B: The Virtual Family Office (VFO)
Best for: $15M–$50M | Moderate complexity | Multi-jurisdiction possible
A VFO provider oversees all advisor relationships, provides consolidated reporting, and handles coordination. You still have underlying specialists, but someone else ensures they communicate.
Technology has made this model increasingly viable. Platforms like Addepar now track over $7 trillion in assets across 1,200+ client firms, providing the kind of consolidated reporting that used to require dedicated staff. These platforms can handle everything from public equities to private investments, real estate, and even collectibles—the messy multi-asset portfolios that founders actually have.
Typical cost: 0.6–1.25% of assets annually | Your time: 2–5 hours per month
Model C: The Lean Single Family Office (SFO)
Best for: $50M–$100M | Higher complexity | Specific needs
You employ one senior professional—a “Chief of Staff for Wealth”—who takes full responsibility for managing your financial life. You need to trust that person. And verify.
Typical cost: 0.75–1.5% of assets annually | Your time: 2–4 hours per month
Most founders in the $5–50 million range operate in Model A or B.
The Six Pillars (Overview)
Each pillar has its own chapter. Here’s the essential idea behind each:
Structure. Most founders either overcomplicate (paying $50K+ annually for structures they don’t need) or oversimplify (keeping everything in personal name until a lawsuit or succession event reveals the cost). Structure should match your complexity.
Treasury. The plumbing. If you have $5M+ sitting with a retail bank, you’re leaving money on the table. Consider currency conversion alone: a typical UK private bank charges 1–1.5% on foreign exchange transactions. Interactive Brokers charges 0.002% (that’s 0.2 basis points) with a $2 minimum. On $2 million of annual USD/GBP conversions, that’s the difference between $40 and potentially $30,000. Securities-based lending lets you borrow against your portfolio instead of selling appreciated assets—often far cheaper than the capital gains tax would have been.
Portfolio Construction. The Core-Satellite framework: 60-70% in liquid, diversified, boring investments (your protection); 30-40% in alternatives where your founder advantages matter (your opportunity).
Income Generation. The Income Floor concept. Separate growth assets from income assets. Let growth compound untouched. Let income fund your life. Market drops 30%? Your income keeps flowing.
Protection. Cybersecurity has become one of the leading causes of direct wealth loss for high-net-worth individuals. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported $2.77 billion in losses from business email compromise alone in 2024—and that’s just the cases that got reported. Email compromise during wire transfers can mean six- or seven-figure losses, usually unrecoverable. A $50 hardware security key protects millions in assets.
Governance. Infrastructure only works if the decision-making process is right. Founders build sophisticated setups, then panic-sell during a crash or commit $2M to a friend’s fund without due diligence. Governance is how you make decisions systematically.
Implementation: Pace Over Speed
The biggest mistake is rushing.
Cash earning 4–5% while you figure things out costs almost nothing. A bad $2M decision because you rushed can cost potentially everything.
The sequence:
Stabilise. Cash secure, basic protection in place, immediate risks addressed.
Foundation. Core team assembled, structure established, governance documented.
Build. Portfolio constructed, income allocation established, systems implemented.
Optimise. Refinements, alternatives access, advanced planning.
In practice, most founders reach a functional system within 12–18 months. Full optimisation may take 2–3 years. A working 80% solution beats a perfect solution that never gets implemented.
Common Mistakes
Building infrastructure before you need it. Trusts and offshore structures at $12M, paying $80K+ annually for complexity that serves no purpose.
Sitting in cash for too long. $15M earning 4% for two years while the market returns 10% costs over $1 million in foregone returns.
Deploying too fast. Five PE funds in 60 days without due diligence. Capital calls come unexpectedly.
Fee blindness. 1.8% in excess fees over 20 years on $10M compounds to staggering amounts. Run the math.
Illiquidity creep. Each PE commitment seems manageable until 60% of your wealth is locked for a decade.
Ignoring cybersecurity. Assuming you’re “not important enough to target.” You are.
Keeping everything in your head. No documentation means no one can continue if something happens to you.
Four Questions Before You Continue
How complex is your situation actually? Single jurisdiction, straightforward investments, simple family? You might need a good accountant and financial planner, not a wealth operating system.
Do you want to understand the system or just outsource it? This playbook assumes you want to understand how things work. If you’d rather hand everything to someone and not think about it, this probably isn’t the right resource.
Is your wealth likely to stay at this level or grow? If you’re spending down over the next decade, optimise for simplicity. If you expect continued wealth creation, proper infrastructure now pays dividends for decades.
Are you ready to retire, or do you want to keep playing—just at a different level? If you’ve made your money and want to do something completely different, you probably don’t need this. If you see it as a stepping stone to the next level of the game, keep reading.
What This Playbook Is Not
This is educational content, not financial advice, not investment recommendations.
I won’t tell you what to invest in or provide specific tax advice. That requires professionals who know your circumstances.
What this playbook does is give you the framework to know what questions to ask, what infrastructure you need, and how the pieces fit together. The goal is for you to be a sophisticated consumer of professional advice—not to replace it.
How to Use This Playbook
You can read straight through or jump to what’s relevant.
If you’re pre-exit or recently post-exit, start with Chapter 1 and work forward. The sequence is intentional.
If you already have infrastructure, use the chapters as reference to evaluate and improve what you have.
These aren’t meant to be read once and forgotten. Come back as your situation evolves.
The operating system you build over the next six to twelve months will serve you for the rest of your life.
