Your Company Is Going Public: the 12-Month Checklist

An IPO turns paper equity into an actual, tradable fortune, on a schedule you do not control, with tax consequences set largely by decisions made before the first trade. Employees who sail through it well share one habit: they treated the year before liquidity as the planning window, so that by the time the lockup expired they were executing a written plan instead of debating with their adrenaline.

Here is the checklist, roughly in order.

Twelve to Six Months Out: Inventory and Taxes

Build the equity inventory: every grant, type, strike, vesting date, and exercise window, ISOs, NSOs, RSUs (most private-company RSUs carry a double trigger that vests at IPO, creating a large wage-income event on listing day). Project the tax year of the IPO now: double-trigger vests plus salary can jump you two brackets, and ISO exercises may fit better in the calendar year before the event, while AMT room exists and the 12-month clock toward long-term treatment starts early. Engage the CPA and planner before the S-1, not after the pop.

Six Months to Listing: the Written Plan

Decide, in writing: how much of your position you will sell at the first opportunity, on what schedule the rest unwinds, and what dollar target funds which life goals, debt gone, house, retirement number per the retirement math. Insiders and anyone with material nonpublic information should implement it as a 10b5-1 plan adopted during an open window, which lets sales execute automatically through blackouts. Calibrate expectations: post-IPO stocks are violently volatile, and the lockup expiration itself often pressures the price as supply hits, your plan should be robust to a lower price, not premised on a higher one.

Listing to Lockup Expiry: Hold the Line

The stock will move dramatically and mean nothing by it. Use the window for mechanics: confirm the double-trigger RSU withholding actually covered the tax (flat supplemental rates usually do not, see the RSU guide), fund estimated payments, and resist buying more exposure, employee stock purchase feels patriotic and doubles down on the same risk. If colleagues' paper wealth talk gets loud, reread your plan; it was written by a calmer version of you.

After the Lockup: Execute and Normalize

Sell the first tranche per the plan regardless of price, that is what the plan is for, then run the remainder like any concentrated position: scheduled tranches, charitable gifts of appreciated shares, position limit at the end state. Redirect proceeds through the windfall sequence: taxes reserved, debts, reserves, tax-advantaged space, diversified portfolio. Then update the paperwork wealth changes: umbrella liability, estate documents, beneficiaries. The goal is boring: a diversified balance sheet where the IPO is a chapter, not the identity.

We quarterback exactly this timeline in equity planning, tax projections through 10b5-1 design.

Tony Colunga · Founder, Attend Wealth

Tony leads Attend Wealth, a fee-based wealth management firm in Atlanta serving professionals, families, and business owners. Advisory services are held to a fiduciary standard. More about Attend