Aclarys

The chart most VC-backed founders haven't seen yet. Founders own 54.8% at Seed. 10.4% by Series D. By Series C, the employee pool collectively owns more than the founding team that built the company. 99% of these founders will never receive personal liquidity from their startup before exit. A decade or more paper rich, cash poor. I started Aclarys looking at this from the GP angle – converting unrealised carry into DPI for LPs. The mechanics worked, the math didn't move the needle. The same engine works much harder one layer up: a decent chunk of personal liquidity to a paper-rich founder is meaningful in a way 0.1× DPI to LPs isn't. So we sharpened. Aclarys is the Fund of Founders – pooled tokenised credit issued against unrealised founder equity in private VC-backed companies. No ownership transfer. No board approval. Founders pledge a defined share of future exit proceeds or a fixed coupon on the amount advanced. Senior credit-shaped tranche for institutional buyers; a retail-accredited junior tranche follows. First pool transacting H2 2026. Founder waitlist now open. In NYC for TECH WEEK by a16z (1–5 June) and ETHGlobal's ETHConf (8–10 June). Founders thinking about personal liquidity, allocators seeing this as an asset class – let's grab 20 minutes. Don't get carried away. Get carried forward. → aclarys.com Chart via Andreessen Horowitz, data from Carta (Peter Walker)

Today marks the end of nine months at Protocol Labs and the start of something I've been building toward for a long time. Genuinely grateful to the entire PL network – the ambition there is real, the people are exceptional, and I'm walking away with a much clearer view of what I actually want to build. The work on capital formation and investor infrastructure brought me back to a problem I couldn't stop thinking about. Which brings me to Aclarys. Private capital markets are structurally illiquid. GPs, LPs, and employees with carried interest exposure wait years – sometimes decades – for meaningful distributions. The J-curve is real. The opportunity cost is enormous. AI and tokenisation are finally making it possible to do something about it. Aclarys is building liquidity infrastructure for private capital markets – converting unrealised carry into real liquidity, without changing ownership. Early days, but feels like the right problem at the right time. → aclarys.com if you're curious or it's relevant to what you're working on. Alongside Aclarys, I'm available for fractional finance and operations engagements through Aksential – particularly useful for venture-backed companies that need the financial and operational foundation built before they can afford a full-time hire. If that sounds familiar, info@aksential.co.uk is the fastest route. Onwards.