The Wealth Paradox of the Builder

Some of the richest people I knew couldn't buy a house.

That was the paradox I watched play out for nearly a decade. I spent my career inside companies like Box, Optimizely, and Checkr as they scaled from early startups to billion-dollar valuations. I worked alongside engineers, product leaders, and early sales hires who had done everything right. They had taken the risk, done the work, and built equity positions worth millions of dollars.

On paper, they were wealthy. In practice, they were trapped.

I watched colleagues struggle to come up with a down payment for a home in the Bay Area. I saw others unable to exercise their stock options because they couldn't fund the tax bill. They were sitting on "bedrock" assets, equity in category defining companies, yet the financial system treated them like they were broke.

The Gap in the Market

Why does this gap exist?

It isn't an accident; it's a structural failure of the traditional financial industry.

The banking system is built for the public markets. If you have shares of Apple or Google, you can borrow against them instantly at low rates. The bank knows the price, and they can sell the shares tomorrow if they need to. It is easy, scalable, and low risk for them.

But private equity is different. It is illiquid. It is opaque. Valuing it requires work. Underwriting it requires understanding the specific nuances of vesting schedules, transfer restrictions, and 409A valuations.

For a traditional bank or wealth manager, doing that work for a $500,000 or $1 million loan simply isn't "efficient." It's easier for them to tell you to wait for the IPO. Or worse, to tell you to sell your shares.

The Cost of Bad Advice

"Just sell some shares." That is the standard advice given to employees who need liquidity.

It sounds prudent. It sounds like "diversification." But as I’ve written elsewhere, it is mathematically devastating. Selling private stock triggers an immediate tax bill, often 37% to 45% and forfeits all future upside. It solves a short term cash flow problem by permanently destroying long-term wealth.

The builders of these companies deserve a better option. They deserve the ability to access the value they’ve created without being forced to liquidate it.

Why "Bedrock"?

I founded Bedrock Bridge Capital to solve this specific problem. The name is intentional.

The engineers and early employees are the bedrock of the technology ecosystem. They build the products and scale the platforms. Yet, the existing liquidity solutions are almost exclusively designed for the C-suite—the founders and executives with positions large enough to attract family offices.

I built this firm to serve the builders.

Our approach is simple and, admittedly, conservative. We lend against private equity, but we do it with a "margin of safety" that protects both the borrower and the lender. We cap our loans at 10% of the equity value. We use non-recourse structures so that your personal assets are never at risk.

We don't do this because we want to limit your liquidity. We do it because we want you to survive the volatility of the private markets. By keeping leverage low, we ensure that you can hold your position through the inevitable ups and downs, all the way to the true finish line: the IPO or acquisition.

The Tool Is Only Half the Solution

For years, I looked for a solution like this for myself and my colleagues. I couldn't find it. So, I built the tool I wished I had.

But now that the tool exists, I’m noticing a second problem. A harder one.

Because this option didn't exist for so long, many of us developed a coping mechanism. We learned to wait. We learned to view "doing nothing" as the safe, prudent choice.

But doing nothing is not a neutral position. It is an active bet. And as we will explore in the next memo, it might be the riskiest bet of your life.