EP24: The Quiet Door — How Pre-IPO Tender Offers Decide Who Gets Out

Drew and Reese take apart how private tender offers actually work — and why employees treating them as 'the exit' are misreading the document on purpose. The company sets the buyer, the price, the eligibility, the disclosure package, the eligibility math. Four-step operator playbook: read the offer-to-purchase document not the cover email, identify the buyer, anchor the price against the 409A and the last primary round, work the pro-rata oversubscription math. Historical parallel: the 1999 dot-com IPO lockup window and the private secondaries that ran inside it. Educational content only.