A Worksheet For Picking Carta Or Forge At A Consultancy

List every non-partner equity or profit-interest holder and how their grant differs from a traditional partnership stake. A consultancy that issued options to associates and principals as a retention tool during a growth phase has a very different situation than one whose only equity holders are voting partners.

Write down the actual event driving the conversation: an associate nearing an option expiration, a founding partner wanting partial liquidity ahead of retirement, or a growth equity investor wanting to buy out an early stakeholder. Each answer points toward a different platform, and writing it down forces the leadership group to agree on the actual problem before anyone starts negotiating a solution to it.

Consulting firms live on client trust, and an outside buyer's diligence process inevitably touches client lists, engagement economics and win rates. Score how sensitive that information is on a simple scale; a firm doing confidential restructuring or M&A advisory work usually scores higher here than one doing broader strategy work, and a higher score pushes toward Carta's internal process. Ask each client-facing partner to weigh in on this score individually rather than estimating it from the top, since the partner closest to a sensitive engagement usually has a sharper read on what a competitor or client would object to seeing than the CFO does.

Estimate what the firm or its existing investors could actually fund without disrupting partner distributions or working capital. Professional services firms often run leaner balance sheets than venture-backed product companies, so this number is frequently smaller than founders expect, which is worth knowing before promising a number to a departing partner. Run this estimate past the managing partner responsible for cash flow planning, not just the person leading the liquidity conversation, since the two roles do not always agree on what the firm can actually spare.

High confidentiality sensitivity plus adequate internal funding points to Carta. Low confidentiality sensitivity, or a funding gap the firm cannot close on its own, points to Forge. A worksheet that comes back mixed, meaning meaningful confidentiality concerns but insufficient internal funding, is the hardest case, and usually means either scaling back the transaction size or investing extra legal effort to structure Forge's diligence access narrowly enough to protect what matters most.

How to read the worksheet result:

• High confidentiality sensitivity combined with adequate internal funding points toward running the program on Carta.
• Low confidentiality sensitivity, or a funding gap the firm cannot close on its own, points toward Forge.
• A mixed result, meaningful confidentiality concerns with insufficient funding, is the hardest case and deserves a real conversation with the partner group or board.
• Rerun the worksheet before each liquidity conversation, since client mix and funding position shift over time.

Bring the worksheet to the partner group or board as a starting point for a real conversation rather than a mechanical answer, and let your AI CFO help model the funding-gap scenarios so the discussion centers on real numbers rather than a vague sense of what feels fair. In the end, this platform choice is not that different from a fee proposal: the right answer depends on scope, timeline and what the client, in this case your own partners and staff, actually needs.

Say a forty-person strategy consultancy took a growth equity investment three years ago and issued options to eight principals as part of that deal. Two principals are now approaching their option expiration, and the worksheet comes back showing moderate confidentiality sensitivity, since the firm's work is broad corporate strategy rather than confidential M&A, and adequate internal funding from the sponsor's committed reserve. The firm runs a Carta tender funded by the sponsor, closes it in under six weeks, and uses the process as a template for the next cohort of principals two years out.

A consultancy's client mix and funding position both shift over time, sometimes significantly after a major engagement win or loss, so treat this worksheet as something to rerun before each liquidity conversation rather than a one-time exercise. A firm that scored low on confidentiality sensitivity three years ago because its work was mostly operational strategy may score very differently today if it has since built a large restructuring or transaction advisory practice. Keep the completed worksheet on file alongside the transaction documents themselves, since the next partner group to face this decision will want to see how the firm reasoned through it the first time rather than starting from a blank page.

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